The Arts Club presents the first UK solo show from 99-year-old Egyptian painter Wassef Boutros-Ghali. With an artistic career spanning several decades, Boutros-Ghali’s work is defined by dazzling abstract compositions inspired by the colours of unrelenting sunlight. Architectural forms emerge, collide and reengineer themselves without narrative, conjured by subjects based on mythology, on nuanced observations of daily life and imagined vistas that relate to but could never work in real life. The exhibition presents works from 2000-2012: a reflective period for the artist by which time he had absorbed numerous architectural and modernist movements - notably colour field painting and geometric abstraction – alongside numerous socio-political events that had impacted his life to date.

Born 1924 in Cairo, Boutros–Ghali’s life and work have been shaped by political upheaval and military conflict, as well as his successful career as an architect. He comes from a political dynasty: his grandfather Boutros Ghali Pasha was Prime Minister of Egypt from 1908-1910, and his brother Boutros was General Secretary of the United Nations. As a young man, Boutros-Ghali’s first love was painting, but he was fervently discouraged by his parents from pursuing his passion, thus training as an architect at Cairo University, graduating first in his class. A self-proclaimed disciple of Le Corbusier, after WWII Boutros-Ghali spent time visiting Europe’s many Bauhaus and modernist buildings. At the age of 26, his first architectural project on the banks of the river Nile summoned an international modernist style – an exception for Egypt at the time. Amidst ongoing political strife in Egypt, he went on to expand his architectural practice in the region, also working as a technical consultant for UNESCO, meanwhile returning to his beloved painting in his spare time.

The exhibition is curated by Amelie von Wedel and Pernilla Holmes of Wedel Art, with special thanks to Leonie Mir and Lesley and Teymour Boutros-Ghali.