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Al-Ahram Weekly 11 - 17 March 1999 Issue No. 420 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 11 - 17 March 1999 Issue No. 420
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Special Features Travel Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Out of Maadi
By Anna Boghiguian
Margo Veillon is a name that is well-known to Cairene gallery visitors. Moreover, it is the only name on the lips of Maadi residents, for whom owning a Veillon is a matter of prestige, as well as a source of great admiration. And rightly so, for there is an immediacy in her painting that we can all respond to. In her very long career, Veillon has tried all sorts of techniques -- watercolour, acrylic, oil. She has also found expression and experimented with mosaic and sculpture. If she is reincarnated, she says, she wants to be a full-time sculptor.
When it comes to choosing her subject matter, she is completely free. Sometimes she works from imagination, sometimes from the visual reality of her surroundings. Her drawings are constantly in motion, never static, and concentrate on the essentials. Her inspiration may emerge from nothing more than a collection of objects -- rocks from the Digla desert, for example. Her travels have resulted in several artists' books, and her museum visits in a huge collection of postcards. She has also turned the basement of her house into a fully-equipped printing press for etchings and prints.
Renata, the owner of the Cairo Berlin gallery, which is hosting the present exhibition, showed me one of Veillon's first prints, done when she was aged 16. Today, at the age of 92, she is not as active as she was ten years ago, when she used to paint from midnight to four o'clock in the morning. Now she is also busy cataloguing everything she has done in the past. She spends five months a year in Zurich, where she has a studio full of work, some of which she exhibits in a bank. Veillon is certainly a personality, with her short white hair, her strong eyes and vivacious manners.
She is still very young for a 92-year-old Swiss-Austrian lady. She has a great joie de vivre, loves to show her work, and an intense curiosity about both her own work and other people's. The 34 watercolours exhibited this month at Cairo Berlin are but a small fragment of such a long career. Veillon has lived in Egypt since she was born in the 1900s, and has borne witness to the many changes that have occurred around her. She taught many people how to paint. She also developed a powerful sense of identity over the years, creating around herself a unique halo of distinction. In her presence, the small gallery in which she now exhibits is turned into an airtight capsule, even though only a tiny fraction of her work is here.
Her watercolours of the Tura Cement Factory were done in return for the cement used to build her studio. For a month she went to Tura every day, to paint the factory. In one of these watercolours one can see the factory's facade, done in bold lines. The composition is strong, the background and foreground clearly separated by light and dark brushwork. A dash of blue grabs the eye. In another watercolour, the cement workers are labouring intensely, yet the composition is still strong, accessible rather than obscure. Other works are portraits of her friends, such as Max Rodenbeck, Walter Eysslink and others. Eysslink's portrait alone occupies an entire wall. She depicts his face first as a full face resembling reality, then as three quarters of a face, and finally as a profile.
Her ink and pen drawings offer not only form but also texture. In a 1939 watercolour, two young boys are seated in a felucca with their father. One of the boys is sleeping, the other is awake. The whole atmosphere of the boat ride, save for an oar in the father's hand, is merely hinted at. The foreground overshadows the background. Emerging from another aspect of her experience is an owl, painted face down, in brown and red, with a blue sky around it. It is the portrait of a bird Veillon herself rescued, nursed and set free. The image renders the motion of the bird flying.
In another painting there are three men in a coffee house, dozing -- enjoying the sea breeze, perhaps, or taking a siesta. The dark blue galabiya gives a strong feeling of the person, and the lines are definitely very well drawn. Veillon herself has said that she is able to capture the essentials of movement in her surroundings. Her eyes have definitely seen and observed carefully everything she has come up against. Her current exhibition may offer just a small glimpse of her work, but she is not going to stop at this. Most probably she has plans for the future, and will keep on going, given her extraordinary ability not only to survive, but to make the most of it.
For details of the exhibition see Listings.
