FOR EVERYONE ELSE, it was a circle with four eyes and big teeth surrounded by many human figures, but for me it was the Mona Lisa at the Louvre,” recounts painter Karim Nada. “I consider it to be the first milestone in my career as an artist. I still have it to this day.”

At the tender age of four, Karim Nada had created what he now considers to be his first masterpiece, a reinterpretation from memory of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. It is the painting that created a personal bond between him and the great Renaissance man, erasing the many centuries separating them.

Any person who appreciates human progress should give something, even if it’s very little, to conserve the landmarks of his community and help preserve its aesthetic qualities.

As people swarmed around the celebrated piece at the Louvre in hope of a mere glimpse of that unfathomable smile, the young Nada was busy weaving his way through the crowd, his target being the same La Giocanda. He finally succeeded in reaching the security cordon that kept visitors of the Louvre at a safe — but to him uncomfortable — distance from the priceless painting, and managed to slide underneath it. He gazed and gazed, absorbing it all before returning with his parents to the hotel room and putting pencil to paper. He drew what he had seen.

It was clear from the very beginning that coincidence and Divine Providence would play decisive roles in Nada’s life.

Nada was born in Alexandria in 1972. When he was three, during a routine checkup, his parents discovered that he had developed a hearing problem. They were unable to enroll him at a regular school in Egypt, but also refused to place him in an institute for children with special needs. Consequently, the whole family moved to Kuwait, where he was able to go to a regular school as well as attend special speech therapy classes in the evenings.

Due to his seeking medical treatment for his hearing condition, he was able to visit the art capitals of the world, an opportunity unavailable to many children his age. This broadened his horizons and gave him considerable experience and exposure. If it weren’t for the visible hearing aids, you would hardly suspect that he had been struggling for so long to speak as fluently as he does today.

Mohsen Allam

“Every child is inherently an artist. At a young age, a child naturally wants to pick up a pencil and colors and draw the same way he would want to play soccer or watch TV for example. It is one of the earliest hobbies accessible for children. As the child grows up, he either continues to show interest in this mode of expression, or shifts to something else,” explains Nada.

Drawing soon became, for Nada, a means of expressing his opinions and releasing his creative energy.

“In my teens, I used to illustrate global issues, like the conflict between the US and Soviet Union and the civil war in Lebanon. Such events moved me. I remember during the US aggression against Libya in the mid-1980s, I drew a map of Libya being stabbed with an Israeli dagger in the grip of an American fist art for me was not a medium for expressing personal aspirations,” says Nada. “What I did was to observe reality, record it and try to propose solutions. I felt the need to comment on the social and political reality we were living. I believe that art must have a purpose. If you contemplate the universe, you’ll see that everything God created has a raison d’etre, and at the same time nature is a work of art.”

After graduating from high school in Kuwait, Nada wanted to study astronomy in the US. He believed the creative process in art was similar to the element of discovery in science, where every other day new cosmic signs are revealed. Up to this point, he hadn’t pondered the notion of joining the school of Fine Arts.

Then another fateful incident resulted in his return to Egypt. “My family and I were in transit in Spain, on our way to the US, when our passports were stolen. So we had no choice other than to return to Egypt and [the Faculty of] Fine Arts was the only option available then.”

A perfectionist, Nada excelled throughout his undergraduate years in the painting department. Painting for him was the mother of all ‘plastic arts’ as the field is known in Egypt, and the single medium with which he could have free reign. In 1995, he graduated with honors and got top grades for his graduation project; it was also the point that marked the climax of his relationship with his beloved Baron Palace.

“The idea for my graduation project and my story with the palace began in 1992. The building had always fascinated me. As a student of art history, I was captivated by its uniqueness as an example of one entity encompassing diverse civilizations, Greco-Roman, Hindu and European. It’s like an open museum,” he says.

In the winter of 1992, he decided to paint it.

“At the time, I had a Jeep which was like a mobile studio that I moved around in with my easel and brushes stacked in the back. I stationed myself as close as possible to the palace, but all I managed was a small sketch, 50 x 70 cm. It didn’t do it justice. It was then that I decided to save the thought for my graduation project.”

Over the next two years, Nada worked to crystallize the idea in his mind, constantly going back to make more sketches. In 1994, he went to Paris to visit the Louvre and seek inspiration from the great post-French revolution artists of the romantic and realist movements. “During those eras,” he says, “artists highlighted social concerns. Art movements were less personal and more preoccupied with ongoing social issues that the artist would then express through his own vision.”

Nada recalls being particularly inspired by one of Rembrandt’s works that depicted officers of the Royal Dutch Navy and had a ship in the background. Another painting by French artist Eugene Delacroix — the artistic chronicler of the French Revolution — pictured a group of shipwrecked sailors, some dead, others dying or trying to survive. “I liked the way it epitomized the drama of human existence, forcing the viewer to interact with it very much like cinema nowadays.”

The outcome of three years of reflection was more than he had bargained for: The Battle of Life evolved into a 3.5 by 4.4 meter oil on wood painting tackling the hardships faced by young people in the present day. It was recently exhibited at the French University in Shurook City as part of Heliopolis’ centenary celebrations.

“When I was making the preliminary sketches, I began to read into the conflict between good and evil expressed through the engravings of the Baron Palace. The architectural element that I chose to be in the background of my painting was an encounter between a lion and elephant [taken from a mural at the palace]. They symbolize evil and good, respectively.”

The human element in the painting is also a reflection of the eternal conflict between good and evil, through the portrayal of six young men taking up equal areas of the piece. Three of the men represent evil, resorting to drugs and women to escape their reality; the other three represent good, those who wish to learn. Between them, Nada designed a chair by putting together motifs from the palace; for example its arms were styled in the form of the serpent god Naga. It represents the external power the young men are counting on to solve their problems.

“The work combined several artistic elements: architecture, sculpture and human figures to give an image that expressed suffering and conflict. They all combined to make an overall philosophical statement on life and the condition of our youth. I intentionally left the background bare to give a sense of mystery and emphasize the idea that one’s fate is always unknown.”

When the alleged ‘Satan worshippers’ incident broke out two years later, Nada was distressed to see how badly the palace had been vandalized.

“This great monument wasn’t protected in any way. There was no guard or fence to stop any passerby from going in and abusing it. Its reputation was being desecrated,” says Nada. He was determined to dedicate his next exhibition to the palace in response to those who defiled it, physically or verbally. “I also wanted to draw the attention of the authorities to the fact that this treasure must be conserved, not left to fall into ruin and decay.”

The Palace project only saw the light in 2000: Message from the Baron was his first one-man show in Cairo, held at the School of Fine Arts in Zamalek. “One of the main purposes of my project was to document the artistic elements of the Palace in terms of sculpture and architecture.” Two years later, four of these works were chosen by the curator of the International Deafway Exhibit at the Millennium Art Center in Washington, where they were allocated a room of their own.

Nada then got busy with his MA thesis, entitled “Literates and their Creative Painting: William Blake, Rabindranath Tagore and Gibran Khalil Gibran,” which he completed in 2003.

When it was announced that the Baron Palace had finally returned to the custody of the Egyptian government, Nada decided to dedicate the proceeds of the exhibition as well as the following one (held at Heliopolis’ Mostaqbal Library) to the restoration. “I believe that we must all contribute. Any person who appreciates human progress should give something, even if it’s very little, to conserve the landmarks of his community and help preserve its aesthetic qualities. We should all try to be part of this legacy,” says Nada.

Refusing to label his own artistic style, Nada believes that every artist expresses his thoughts in the way he finds appropriate.

“I personally view my work as a means of recording reality,” he says. Although generally classical in his approach, he differs from the classical school in that he does not attempt to beautify ugliness. He mixes elements of the Classic, Realist, Romantic and Expressionist schools. “At the end of the day,” he says, “I regard all schools of art as one school. As Khalil Gibran says, ‘If you look at the world from above the clouds, you’ll see no boundaries between the countries.’ It is all one world.” et