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Artist: Students of Ramses Wissa Wassef (Egyptian, 1911-1974)
Ramses Wissa Wassef was an Egyptian architect and educator. He earned his BA degree from the Ecole Des Beaux Arts in Paris in 1935. His graduation project "A potter's house in Old Cairo " received the first prize by the examination board. Upon returning to Cairo, in 1938, he was nominated as a professor of art and history of architecture in the college of Fine Arts in Cairo.
"One cannot separate beauty from utility, the form from the material, the work from its function, man from his creative art."
In 1951, Ramses Wissa Wassef embarked upon an experiment in creativity which would become universally acclaimed. He set out to prove that creativity was innate -- that anyone could produce art. He had become discouraged by the general decline of creativity in 20th century urban culture and dismayed by the deadening influence of mass production. He felt that routine education was stifling. For his experiment he chose uninhibited, free-spirited young children who were isolated from many aspects of modern civilization.
In 1952, Wassef established a weaving studio in Harrania, Egypt and taught a group of young children to weave. No one but Ramses Wissa Wassef, the freethinking architect and educator who set the simple social experiment in motion, imagined where the first group of students would take the ancient tradition – and art – of weaving. But today the result of his vision is clear: a unique collection of tapestries, exhibited and collected worldwide, that expresses the richness of Egyptian village life.