I thought I was early, yet I found Picasso Gallery already crowded with admirers of the great artist Abdel Razek Okasha, celebrating the works of his latest exhibition Tales from Paris. Okasha never forgets that he is also a novelist, and so he presents tales with the brush of a painter. He is both the narrator and the visual storyteller.
I had followed the works individually, but now they stood together, and I shall begin with four of Okasha’s canvases from his exhibition Tales from Paris at Picasso Gallery. The four paintings appear adjacent in theme and complete in their visual narration, as the artist depicts everyday Parisian life through a different lens—as if he were a “Gabarti” chronicler, observing with Egyptian eyes from an imagined mashrabiya the details of walking, shadows, crowds, and human relations.
In the first painting, we see small groups of people walking through an open yellow space, most notably three figures at the front—two side by side and one alone. At the bottom of the scene sits a figure on a chair, perhaps a musician or a storyteller, in contrast with the movement of the others.
Here, the artist sets us before a scene that merges motion with stillness, the passerby with the stationary narrator. The painting evokes the image of the “Gabarti” observer who records daily impressions in his notebook. The dominant yellow suggests the heat of time and the speed of passing, while the black chair anchors the idea of permanence and documentation.
In the second painting, groups walk in one direction, their elongated shadows almost parallel to beams of light. There is a duality: disciplined rows above and small clusters in dialogue below.
Here the artist borrows Paris’s sensitivity as a city of collective movement and ordered rhythm, yet he captures, at the same time, moments of whisper and side conversation. The scene resembles a market or a square, where the individual is not lost within the crowd but retains his own voice. The long shadows are not merely aesthetic—they are extensions of the people, their hidden inscriptions upon the earth.
The third painting shows lines more twisted, as if people cross each other’s paths. Some walk together like teams, others stand in conversational circles, all rendered with blue and violet touches.
This work resembles an urban square where paths and ideas intertwine. Akasha highlights the city as a living fabric, woven through conversations, coincidences, and chance encounters. The blue cast upon the figures recalls the reflection of the Seine, as though Paris can only be read through a watery texture flowing into the souls of passersby.
Finally, a more vacant and isolated scene: vast yellow expanses with very small groups of walkers, each moving diagonally into depth. This painting is the most contemplative, as if the artist withdraws slightly to view Paris from a higher window, where humanity becomes mere moving dots upon a great map. Softer colors and dimmer shadows suggest a moment of reflection on the meaning of transient existence.
This set truly embodies what I call “Observations of the Gabarti of Parisian Artistic Life from an Egyptian Mashrabiya.” The artist is not simply relaying a European scene, but reading Paris with Egyptian eyes, observing people as though they were an open text, recording their presence and footsteps as a visual document. The long shadows are like secret writings upon the city’s ground, and the blurred, undefined faces reinforce the idea that what remains is not individual features but the trace and movement.
The second series of works by Abdel Razek Okasha feels more intimate and inward, as though they are the other face of the Parisian street scenes we discussed earlier. If the first group recorded the rhythm of public life, these four paintings shed light on the inner human realm: the body, emotion, relationships, and the struggle between isolation and embrace. They pulse with the spirit of an Egyptian who lived in Paris for thirty years, his heart divided between Eastern roots and Western rhythm.
The first painting (top right) depicts a bent woman, engulfed in blue, beside a musical instrument or seat, as if surrendering to an inner rhythm. Here appears Paris as a city of music and the arts, yet the artist reshapes it with an Eastern spirit: the woman becomes a symbolic figure of waiting or dreaming. The dominant blue evokes calm and cold, yet the body’s posture suggests an attempt at warmth and confession. It is a painting about a heart that lives to two tempos: Eastern dreamy and Western disciplined.
The second painting (top left) shows a woman leaning into a dark space, surrounded by red, blue, and black. The lines are tense, the red charged with emotion. Here we read the struggle of exile and loneliness: red as the background of a fiery Egyptian heart yearning with longing, while blue engulfs the body in Paris’s chill. The work is a kind of inner cry, translating the ordeal of voluntary exile, where old belonging meets long residence in another city.
The third painting (bottom left) portrays a man and woman in a moment of bodily and spiritual closeness. The man’s arm wraps around the woman, while she yields in near surrender. This canvas embodies the yearning for the warmth of human connection. Akasha paints touch as refuge, as though long exile created an aching need for embrace. Blue here is not cold but poetic backdrop—the color of the city that fused with the artist’s heart, though he still craves authentic Egyptian warmth.
The fourth painting (bottom right) depicts intertwined figures, nude or semi-nude, painted in cool hues but alive with passion. This work is the boldest and most honest in revealing the tension between body and spirit, between East and West. In Paris, the artist experienced the freedom of the body in art, yet he still paints it with an Eastern eye, leaning toward symbolism rather than directness. Faces are blurred or half-shown, a sign that what endures is not identity but the meaning of human encounter.
This series mirrors the heart of an Egyptian who carried Cairo within him while living in Paris for three decades. Cold blue is the color of estrangement, burning red the shadow of the East. In these paintings, solitude meets affection, silence meets music, body meets spirit. They are not merely canvases of Parisian women, but of a symbolic woman—she may be Egypt, the absent beloved, or exile itself embodied in human form.
From the opening at Picasso Gallery: Exhibition Tales from Paris by Abdel Razek Okasha
