Ibrahim SHAHDA
(1929-1991)

Ibrahim Shahda, born in Egypt, enters the Cairo Fine-Arts school in 1947 where he works with french teacher Beppi-Martin. He finishes his studies in 1952, and three years later, he wins a prize and organizes his first exhibition. He then decides to leave for France.

Shahda arrives in Paris, but he feels isolated and has almost no money. A friend invites him to live in the south of France, in Carpentras. There, he paints, exhibits his work and wins the Festival d'Avignon Painting Prize with "La femme en noir", now part of the Calvet Museum collections. He also wins the Aix-en-Provence Painting Prize the same year.

But left unsatisfied, he chooses to go back to Paris and works there on his own from 1962 to 1964. He visits Italy, goes to Bretagne in 1965-1966, and then returns to Provence.

Shahda visits Belgium, Netherlands, Spain and Italy again, and shows his work in different exhibitions in Avignon (1966, 1971, 1974 and 1975), Carpentras (1967 and 1972), Paris (1969 and 1971), Marseille (1974).

In 1975, he finds out he is seriously ill. This will cause him to work harder than ever in a great isolation. Two important exhibitions are organized in Carpentras in 1981 and 1984.

From 1985 to 1991, despite the cancer and its heavy treatment, he keeps on painting with this feeling of emergency that only great artists have. Posthumous exhibitions are organized in Carpentras (1993), Alès (1994), Saint-Rémy-de-Provence (1998), Vaison-la-Romaine (1998), Paris (1998), Avignon (1999), Malaucène (2000), Carpentras (2006), Paris (2009), Marseille (2011) and Aix-en-Provence (2011).

The Calvet Museum in Avignon owns 2 paintings by Shahda.

Shahda's work - mostly (oil) paintings and pastels - includes a lot of portraits and especially self portraits, but many landscapes and still lifes too. His art is truly his own, and is clearly linked to other great painters.