AHMED MORSI is a New York-based artist, poet, and critic with a multidisciplinary career that spans seven decades of creative output. A member of the group of artists whose practices developed under the influence of surrealism in the 1940s/50s, collectively referred to as the “Alexandria school,” Morsi’s lyrical and introspective practice offers a powerful meditation on memory, non-belonging, and the passage of time.
Androgynous figures populate his canvases and prints, accompanied by birds, fish, bulls and horse skulls; recurrent symbols meticulously arranged in non-geographic spaces to evoke displacement, liminality, and longing — often as surrogates for the artist himself. Surrealist devices like doubling, mirroring, and repetition are used to present a subjective and personal vision of exile and alienation. Like riddles, Morsi reassembles his disparate elements in elusive compositions. His paintings exude an elegiac and mournful sensibility, bearing witness to the artist’s life as an Alexandrian that has been living away from home since the 1970s.
In 1976 while living in New York, Morsi developed his printmaking practice as an investigation of form, repetition, and the singularity of copies, resulting in an expansive oeuvre of more than 550 prints executed from the 1970s through the 1990s. His prints span silkscreens, lithography, etching, and linocut, and were created at a moment in cultural history in which the medium was at the forefront of art production and thought.
Alongside his painting and printmaking practices, Morsi has created an extensive corpus as a poet and critic. He published his first poetry collection, “Songs of the Temples / Steps in Darkness” in 1949 at the age of 19, and has published tens of diwans, essays, and books of criticism since. Most recently, an English translation of Morsi’s “Poems of Alexandria and New York” (2021) brought together poems from two of his best known collections “Pictures from The New York Album” and “Elegies to the Mediterranean.” Morsi has also produced three artist books, “The Cavafy Suite” (1990), Stones of Bobello (1991), and “Song for Cairo” (2012). The recent publication on his practice, “Ahmed Morsi: A Dialogic Imagination” (2022) showcases his multidisciplinary practice between poetry, painting, printmaking, and photography.
AHMED MORSI (b. 1930, Alexandria) studied English literature at Alexandria University and developed an independent painting practice in his native city in the 1950s. Upon his graduation, Morsi relocated to Baghdad, at a time when the city was a hub for artists and literati. Alongside producing visionary paintings and stage sets, Morsi co-founded in 1968 the avant-garde magazine "Galerie 68" with some of Egypt's most prominent contemporary writers and artists. In 1974, Morsi moved to New York City, where he lives and works to this day.
Recent and upcoming solo shows include “Ahmed Morsi”, Art Basel - Feature, Basel (2022); “Detail from a Mural,” Salon 94, New York (2021); “Pictures from a New York Album”, Gypsum, Cairo (2020); “Ahmed Morsi: The Flying Poet,” Aicon Gallery, New York (2018/2019); “ICON: Ahmed Morsi,” Abu Dhabi Art, Abu Dhabi (2018); “Ahmed Morsi,” Art Dubai, Dubai (2017); “Ahmed Morsi: You Closed Your Eyes in Order to See the Unseen," Gypsum, Cairo (2017); Ahmed Morsi: A Dialogic Imagination,” Sharjah Art Museum, Sharjah (2017); “Ahmed Morsi: A Pure Artist,” Mahmoud Khalil Museum, Cairo (2016); and “Metaphysics,” Gallery Misr, Cairo (2012).
Recent and upcoming group shows include “Alexandria: Past Futures,” BOZAR, Brussels (2022) and MUCEM: Musée des Civilisations de l'Europe et de la Méditerranée, Marseille (2023); “Being as Communion,” Thessaloniki Biennial (2022); “Greater New York,” MoMA PS1, New York (2021); “New Images of Man,” Blum & Poe, Los Angeles (2019); “Assistants of the Void,” CURATED BY Festival, Vienna (2019); “Two-man show,” Frieze London (2018); “Eternal Light,” Art d’Egypte, Cairo (2018); “Arab Print Vol III,” Meem Gallery, Dubai (2017); “When Art Becomes Liberty: The Egyptian Surrealists (1938 - 1965),” Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul (2017) and Palace of Fine Arts, Cairo (2016); “Beloved Bodies, Part I,” Maraya Art Center, Sharjah (2016/17); and “Debunking Orientalism,” Untitled Space, New York (2016), among others.
Morsi’s work has been acquired by various regional and international institutions including The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; The British Museum, London; Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Delhi; Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha; Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah; Barjeel Art foundation, Sharjah; The Egyptian Museum of Modern Art, Cairo and The Alexandria Museum of Fine Art, Alexandria. His work is also held in private collections in the Middle East, Europe, Canada and the US.