On the occasion of the celebration of Tagore’s birth anniversary, the Maulana Azad Indian Cultural Center in Zamalek hosted an exhibition of caricature portraits under the title “Tagore – Mahfouz”.
The exhibition was opened by the Indian Ambassador to Cairo, Ajit Gupte, Dr. Camelia Sobhi, a member of the Senate, and Cartoonist Fawzy Morsy, in the presence of Peter Mollema, Ambassador of Netherlands to Cairo, Dr. Magdalena Cruz, Cultural Counselor at the Spanish Embassy in Cairo, and an elite group of caricature artists and visual artists, and a number of journalists and media professionals, and the audience.
Cartoonist Fawzy Morsy, the exhibition coordinator, said: The exhibition presents a wonderful collection of caricatures that bring together two of the world’s greats who won the Nobel Prize in Literature, namely the Egyptian novelist and writer Naguib Mahfouz and the Indian poet and writer Rabindranath Tagore. It includes more than 50 caricature panels drawn by the fingertips of 50 artists from 21 countries around the world. Among them are Egypt and India.
The exhibition is organized by the Maulana Azad Indian Cultural Center in cooperation with the Caricature Museum in Fayoum and the Egypt Cartoon (FECO), and a group of prominent Egyptian artists participate in it from Egypt, including: Ahmed Alawi, Hosni Abbas, Adham Lotfy, Farouk Moussa, Khaled Al-Marsafi, Noura Makram, Ghada Mostafa, Hadir Yahya. Bassem Adham Lotfy, Hani Abdel Gawad, Marwa Ibrahim, Omar Siddiq, Shaima Shafi’i, Yasmine Gamal, and others from different countries.
Rabindranath Tagore and Naguib Mahfouz, two of the most prominent novelists from India and Egypt, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913 and 1988, respectively. While Rabindranath Tagore was the first person from outside Europe to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, Naguib Mahfouz was the first Egyptian to win this award.