Adam Henein (Egyptian, b. 1929)

Deeply inspired and captivated by his own ancestral heritage, works by Adam Henein are distinguished in their ability to reveal a heightened sensitivity and influence of Pharaonic inspiration given the gravity of the style, the simplicity of the planes, the compactness and density of the masses he imparts to his sculptures.

Following a trip to an archeological museum in his childhood which remained a sort of epiphany that changed his life and therefore allowed the young boy to find his calling, he equally discovered the works of Brancusi, Moore, Maillol, Marini and Martini that would push his works to embrace both ancestral heritage and contemporary modernity. In some ways, Henein's works present a clashing of the past with present as if the centuries that have past have dissipated. Thus one is catapulted into a mystical schism of quasi-divine splendour that is exemplified by the smooth elegant lines and planes of his work.

An example of the artist's earlier works, in Labour Henein portrays a labour worker, much like those often portrayed in hieroglyphical papyruses, that stands in solemnity, head proudly tilted and the shoulders exaggeratedly squared, his legs apart. Although small in size it possesses a monumentality that gives the impression of a proudly erected stele, much like an obelisk. Characterised by an allusive simplification of form that is all at once modern and archaic, it thus reflects the sculptor's awareness of the heightened aesthetic quality found in museum fragments as well as the smooth contours of sculpture of the 1940s and 1950s.