Wechahi' Sculpture & Aquarelles
Dynamic Sculpture
Wechahi is known in Spain through his participations in the International Biennales of Sports in Fine Arts, Madrid. He was honored by a distinguished Spanish Award. His sculpture is well adjusted to the sportive theme, as it is achieved through an imminently dynamic conception; his material is at once, expressive of the figure, and of the force it enhances, in creative works demonstrating the nimble leap in high jump, and the cyclist as he ascends uphill through the mountainous paths.
A Metaphysical Portraitist
Wechahi has achieved several portraits, ever since he was a student in Egypt, an achievement he carried out in Italy and Spain, as well. He devised a highly original, neo-figurative style. His models do not simply accommodate a representation of the physical features, rather they intend to convey what is beyond the surface of the human, what abides in the domain of the spiritual, in the subconscious territories, and within the emotional labyrinths. Accordingly, it may be said that these portraits made by the Egyptian sculptor do not intend a physical representation, but aspire a metaphysical character that transcends the mere formation of likenesses.
The Interaction Between Forms
Wechahi’s sculptural works and aquarelle drawings are representative of the great sculpture of our time. They are synthetic works reuniting and merging various elements, due to the artist’s profound visualization of diverse Mediterranean cultures, as is expressed by his animal figures, and guitar players, which are treated by a profound feeling for the material handled, as well as for form and expression. His image of the twentieth century man is, at once, paradoxically, soaring and in captivity. His interrelated forms, well accommodated in their proper space, appear in semi-human shapes playing the eternal game of love and death. These huge, eloquent forms, containing space, are architectural cosmographies, silent and eloquent, at once, reminiscent of the hermetic and still sculptures of ancestral Egypt. At other instances, his sculptures are emphatic of the play between form and appearance, conveying the sobriety of Greek sculpture since archaic times, and in its different forms of development in the Mediterranean. The artistic expressions Wechahi bears from his ancestral homeland are transformed in his works into high modernity, thus conveying utmost universality.
Raul Chavarri
Madrid, Spain, February 1978