Ramses Younan
Ramses Younan (رمسيس يونان ; Minya, 1913 - Cairo, 1966), was an Egyptian painter and writer.
Biography
Ramses Younan created in 1939, along with Georges Henein, Ikbal El Alaily and Edmond Jabès, the surrealist journal La Part du Sable. He was also a prominent member of the trotskyist group Art et Liberté since 1939, and edited the magazine El Magalla El Guedida between 1943 and 1945. Both hostile to British colonialism, Hitler and Stalin, Younan published his own Arabic translations of works and essays by Albert Camus, Franz Kafka and Arthur Rimbaud.
In 1947, Younan participated in the International Surrealist Exhibitions in Paris and Prague and signed Rupture Inaugurale, the collective manifesto published by Parisian Surrealists.
His first personal exhibition was held in 1948 at the Gallery Nina Dausset (Paris). He also published in 1948 a dialog with Henein, Notes sur une ascèse hystérique, strongly criticizing Surrealist automatism.
Younan returned to Cairo in 1956 and faced an increasingly stifling political and cultural climate, but remained true to his principles and his views on art and freedom.
Writings
- « Ghayat al-rassam al-asri (The Purpose of the contemporary painter) », essay on Amédée Ozenfant, ed. Gamaat Habib, 1938
- « Notes sur une ascèse hystérique (Notes on a hysterical asceticism) », dialog with Georges Henein, Cairo, 1948
- « La Quatrième dimension vaut la première : œuvres incomplètes (The Fourth Dimension is worth the first: incomplete works) », La Nouvelle part du sable, 2002
Bibliography
- Azar, Aimé. Les Inquiets, 1938-1946. [The Restless, 1938-1946]. Cairo: Imprimerie Française, 1954.
- Karnouk, Liliane. Modern Egyptian Art, 1910-2003. New York: American University in Cairo Press, 2005.
- Shārūnī, Ṣubḥī. al-Muthaqqaf al-mutamarrid, Ramsīs Yūnān [The Intellectual Rebel]. Cairo: al-Hayʼah al-Miṣrīyah al-ʻĀmmah lil-Kitāb bi-al-taʻāwun maʻa al-Jamʻīyah al-Miṣrīyah li-Nuqqād al-Fann al-Tashkīlī, 1992.
- Adam Biro & René Passeron « Dictionnaire général du surréalisme et de ses alentours », Office du Livre, Fribourg, Suisse et Presses universitaires de France, Paris, 1982, biography by Édouard Jaguer,p. 431.