Page 166 - Ahmed- Nawar
P. 166
ds to an organized strategy that drives a set of actions and procedures to achieve an end.
From Tanta, young Nawar moved to Cairo to enroll in the Faculty of Fine Arts, and despite his se-
rious concern with his studies, he did not forget the story of the war, especially its tragic aspects.
He began reading about Vietnam, Palestine, and the displacement of Palestinian refugees, and
then expressed his sense of racial discrimination as a type of war. In the mid-sixties of the twen-
tieth century, he drew paintings about the Vietnam War, the Lebanon War, and the 1956 War; in
1968, he presented his paintings: Palestine / Storm, Palestine, and Palestine's Cry, produced with
inks on particleboard. After Nawar finished his studies at the faculty with a decision necessitated
by the 1967 war, as mentioned above, he joined with his colleagues in the popular resistance with
an increased sense of responsibility for the homeland and a state of anticipation for the hour of
revenge and the restoration of the homeland.
Storming into...Palestine, felt-tip pens on paper, 19 × 12 cm, 1966.
This condition prompted him to express it in an artwork entitled "Willingness and Expectation"
1968, depicting a space crowded with faces, in which eyes were turned into the barrel of rifles
and cannons. He participated with the work in an international exhibition in Spain, "Ibiza Interna-
tional Biennale" at the beginning of 1968, and the artwork won the first prize and the preparation
began to travel and receive the award, which included a sum of money and a commemorative
medal along with a four-year scholarship in Spain. He had graduated from the faculty and was
appointed as a teaching assistant and the date of postponing his enlistment had expired. On his
way to complete the travel procedures and obtain the approval of the armed forces to travel, and
when he reached the conscription area in Alexandria, he was considered a conscript from that
moment. He put on his military uniform, received his luggage and equipment, and canceled his
trip to receive the award and his scholarship. After training, he joined the sniper corps to become
a proficient sniper, and then Nawar entered another battle with which he began to see the world
through the barrel of his rifle.
When he arrived at the front as a sniper soldier, his concepts about the war deepened. That war
that he discovered in his village and then through his readings at the university level is different
from the war he lived and faced on the front as part of its cruel machine. Here, his reflections led
him to what he called "the law of injustice" through which he was searching for justice and human
rights, and the geniuses who make tools of destruction instead of making tools of life, engaging
people in a vicious circle so that everyone gets involved in the game of war. The oppressor uses
weapons, and the oppressed also uses weapons, and there is no way to defeat weapons except
with weapons. Hence, the sensitive artist turned into a sniper motivated by the meaning of re-
venge for the oppressed from the oppressor. Nawar adhered to his weapon and sniping became
for him a sacred craft in the issue of confrontation with the Zionist enemy. He was so absorbed in
his cause that he forgot his village, his city, and everything outside the battlefield.
Thus, Nawar lived the cause of war, searching for a human horizon that supports the oppressed
and victims of wars; some Spanish critics described him as a "prisoner of war" once and "encir-
cled of war" another time. Nawar is still stocked with the idea of war, whose data affected the
vocabulary of his picture, starting with his exhibition on war held in 1970, in the same year as
the end of his service in the armed forces, which included seventy artworks, using some of the
fragments that he asked permission to take from the front to be part of this artistic experience.
The fragments, which are the destruction itself, have turned into statues against the destruction,
and the truth is that Nawar left the front with his body while his soul did not leave it. He retained
the spirit of the fighter, and his works remained spaces in which the homeland is elevated and
presents his cases with the fighting tool he owns and does not age, which is not limited by the
period of recruitment or the location of the battle, his art, which he carried with the issues of the
homeland. It is easily traced through the titles of his exhibitions "Jabal Abu Ghneim, The Martyr,
and The War and Peace", the names of his paintings and field sculptures "The Statue of Liberty,
164
From Tanta, young Nawar moved to Cairo to enroll in the Faculty of Fine Arts, and despite his se-
rious concern with his studies, he did not forget the story of the war, especially its tragic aspects.
He began reading about Vietnam, Palestine, and the displacement of Palestinian refugees, and
then expressed his sense of racial discrimination as a type of war. In the mid-sixties of the twen-
tieth century, he drew paintings about the Vietnam War, the Lebanon War, and the 1956 War; in
1968, he presented his paintings: Palestine / Storm, Palestine, and Palestine's Cry, produced with
inks on particleboard. After Nawar finished his studies at the faculty with a decision necessitated
by the 1967 war, as mentioned above, he joined with his colleagues in the popular resistance with
an increased sense of responsibility for the homeland and a state of anticipation for the hour of
revenge and the restoration of the homeland.
Storming into...Palestine, felt-tip pens on paper, 19 × 12 cm, 1966.
This condition prompted him to express it in an artwork entitled "Willingness and Expectation"
1968, depicting a space crowded with faces, in which eyes were turned into the barrel of rifles
and cannons. He participated with the work in an international exhibition in Spain, "Ibiza Interna-
tional Biennale" at the beginning of 1968, and the artwork won the first prize and the preparation
began to travel and receive the award, which included a sum of money and a commemorative
medal along with a four-year scholarship in Spain. He had graduated from the faculty and was
appointed as a teaching assistant and the date of postponing his enlistment had expired. On his
way to complete the travel procedures and obtain the approval of the armed forces to travel, and
when he reached the conscription area in Alexandria, he was considered a conscript from that
moment. He put on his military uniform, received his luggage and equipment, and canceled his
trip to receive the award and his scholarship. After training, he joined the sniper corps to become
a proficient sniper, and then Nawar entered another battle with which he began to see the world
through the barrel of his rifle.
When he arrived at the front as a sniper soldier, his concepts about the war deepened. That war
that he discovered in his village and then through his readings at the university level is different
from the war he lived and faced on the front as part of its cruel machine. Here, his reflections led
him to what he called "the law of injustice" through which he was searching for justice and human
rights, and the geniuses who make tools of destruction instead of making tools of life, engaging
people in a vicious circle so that everyone gets involved in the game of war. The oppressor uses
weapons, and the oppressed also uses weapons, and there is no way to defeat weapons except
with weapons. Hence, the sensitive artist turned into a sniper motivated by the meaning of re-
venge for the oppressed from the oppressor. Nawar adhered to his weapon and sniping became
for him a sacred craft in the issue of confrontation with the Zionist enemy. He was so absorbed in
his cause that he forgot his village, his city, and everything outside the battlefield.
Thus, Nawar lived the cause of war, searching for a human horizon that supports the oppressed
and victims of wars; some Spanish critics described him as a "prisoner of war" once and "encir-
cled of war" another time. Nawar is still stocked with the idea of war, whose data affected the
vocabulary of his picture, starting with his exhibition on war held in 1970, in the same year as
the end of his service in the armed forces, which included seventy artworks, using some of the
fragments that he asked permission to take from the front to be part of this artistic experience.
The fragments, which are the destruction itself, have turned into statues against the destruction,
and the truth is that Nawar left the front with his body while his soul did not leave it. He retained
the spirit of the fighter, and his works remained spaces in which the homeland is elevated and
presents his cases with the fighting tool he owns and does not age, which is not limited by the
period of recruitment or the location of the battle, his art, which he carried with the issues of the
homeland. It is easily traced through the titles of his exhibitions "Jabal Abu Ghneim, The Martyr,
and The War and Peace", the names of his paintings and field sculptures "The Statue of Liberty,
164
