Born in Cairo 1940, Egyptian artist Ikram Omar studied at the faculty of Fine Arts, Egypt, and at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts in Paris, France. Finally, she obtained her degree from the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome, Italy, in 1966.
The artist, Ikram Omar, chose to make her cultural artistic message a message aimed at raising many generations, through her teaching in Port Said and Egypt’s language schools for more than 15 years. She was keen to open exhibitions for her students and still keeps dozens of the works of her beloved students.
As she taught children, many of their families loved studying art as well, so she became the family’s art teacher, and one of her students was the mother, Egyptian actress Zuzu Nabil.
Omar stayed away from art for a long time and suffered from severe depression as a result of her distance from artistic production for many reasons imposed on her by the wheel of life and her responsibilities towards her family. She preferred to support her husband and teacher, the late artist Mamdouh Ammar (1928-2012).
Omar is considered the first creator of depicted textile paintings. She uses different fabrics as a background or as small pieces that form the parts of the basic composition, such as organza fabrics. Her own capabilities vary from one textile surface to another, so that each material is consistent with the chosen theme; most of which are from nature, such as scenes of gardens, trees, flowers and under seas. She also uses birds, the sun and the moon as symbols that present her silky dream through silk threads, and presents her dream of growth and life as an extension of those threads that were once a part belonging to a living artist’s experience.
She began reading “One Thousand and One Nights” by Naguib Mahfouz in 2001, and re-read it several times “because of its beauty. I used to find its characters moving in front of me, and I was amazed every time by his ability to express overwhelming situations and feelings with the fewest words,” as she put it. Ikram Omar describes that novel as “an astrologer” that prompted her to read the original volumes of “One Thousand and One Nights” as well. She says: “I wanted to get to know the original book, which inspired Naguib Mahfouz to write his novel to such a degree, and I found myself wandering between the original volume and his novel. Between a vast world of imaginative folk stories, and contemporary tales from the basket of this imagination, Mahfouz introduced us to Shahryar and the family of this palace in a unique way in employing imagination.”
For 20 years, the artist Ikram Omar has been drawing sketches inspired by “One Thousand and One Nights” and its characters. She says: “I used to take notes with each reading, and turn them into closer sketches to try to depict the scenes that I stop in front of often, and the first of them was a painting of Sinbad and the rock that He attacked his ship. I was portraying the good and bad guys in the novel, and I often drew the character of Al-Shawahi Om Al-Dawahi, who inspired me to the point that I often found myself starting a new sketch and drawing her in the end.”
Ikram Omar’s work combines colors, inks, and pigments, as well as fabric, which she combines with drawing, in an employment that she believes gives her horizons for expressing stories and imagination. She says: “I did not use one type of fabric. I used very diverse materials, ranging from rough and soft textures, transparent ones, and gauze.” Medical and natural silk, which I discovered had more than one type, I used all of them with coloring materials.”
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