A painter, writer, and critic, Ramsès Younan was one of the co-signatories of the 1938 manifesto Long Live Degenerate Art!, and he co-founded the Art and Liberty Group with Georges Henein in 1939, a collective that developed a distinctly Egyptian Surrealist movement. His work Portrait (n.d.) features two superimposed silhouettes of faces rendered in an abstracted fashion. The frontal face stretches out into voluminous coils, reminiscent of a seashell that has been sliced open or an enlarged section of the inner ear. The face in the back, on the other hand, is shadow-like and flat. Separated from one another and looking in opposite directions, the faces appear estranged and alienated. Juxtaposing the two images, Younan divulges his Surrealist fascination with dreamlike compositions, the subconscious mind, and distorted, biomorphic shapes. Younan’s work frequently featured tortured or dismembered bodies as a commentary against repression and in support of women’s rights.
—Suheyla Takesh
