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Lot Essay
Fossilized Creatures belongs to the final phase of El-Gazzar's work, his Space Period, executed after his visit to Aswan High Dam in 1963. Whilst there he made numerous detailed sketches of the site, especially of the huge machines and teams of men who swarmed about them. These pictures are dominated by monumental contraptions and resemble modern day re-workings of Bruegel the Elder's famous Tower of Babel. The summation of these was his epic painting The High Dam (1964), for which he received the Medal of Art and Sciences and the National Encouragement Prize.
Whilst there is no doubt that El-Gazzar's visit to the dam affected him profoundly (his work pre- and post-Aswan are strikingly different), his attitude to what he saw remains strangely ambivalent. He appears to have been both fascinated and repelled by the interaction between man and machine, between biology and technology. Influenced by what he saw at Aswan, but also by the reports of Cold War space technology brinkmanship, he moved away from a surrealism influenced by the irrationalism of folklore towards a surrealism that resembled science fiction.
In present work El-Gazzar is looking far into the future, when instead of seeing traces of ancient creatures, it is human figures that are trapped within layers of rock and crystal. It this future it is humanity that has become extinct, and in this painting El-Gazzar is sounding his protest at the meaningless destruction that had characterized much of the twentieth century. Although El-Gazzar made numerous small-scale drawings at this time, oil paintings from this period are exceedingly rare. The present lot is among the largest examples in private hands.
Whilst there is no doubt that El-Gazzar's visit to the dam affected him profoundly (his work pre- and post-Aswan are strikingly different), his attitude to what he saw remains strangely ambivalent. He appears to have been both fascinated and repelled by the interaction between man and machine, between biology and technology. Influenced by what he saw at Aswan, but also by the reports of Cold War space technology brinkmanship, he moved away from a surrealism influenced by the irrationalism of folklore towards a surrealism that resembled science fiction.
In present work El-Gazzar is looking far into the future, when instead of seeing traces of ancient creatures, it is human figures that are trapped within layers of rock and crystal. It this future it is humanity that has become extinct, and in this painting El-Gazzar is sounding his protest at the meaningless destruction that had characterized much of the twentieth century. Although El-Gazzar made numerous small-scale drawings at this time, oil paintings from this period are exceedingly rare. The present lot is among the largest examples in private hands.