Ramses Wissa Wassef
A story of love and dedication

    Ramses Wissa Wassef was born On November 9, 1911 in Cairo. His father was a lawyer and politician who played a significant role in liberating his country from the colonial rule.

    In 1929, Wassef went to France and studied architecture at the Ecole Des Beaux Arts in Paris.

    In 1935, he was awarded his BA in architecture, as his graduation project "A potter's in old Cairo " received the first prize by the examination board.

    In 1938, he was nominated as a professor of art and history of architecture in the college of Fine Arts in Cairo.

    In 1940, he was commissioned to design and build a private primary school in Old Cairo district, which witnessed his first experience of teaching the technique of tapestry for children who were weaving spontaneously without a model nor influence.

    In 1948, he married Sophie Hapip Gorgi, an artist and daughter of a well known sculpture.

    In 1952, he bought a piece of land, totaling 3000 square meters, near Harrania village to enlarge the experience of Old Cairo school, this time among people living in rural area.

    In 1958, he has his first grand exhibition held in Bale Museum, which was followed hence after by other exhibitions held in Swiss, Holland and Germany, etc.

    In 1962, he was commissioned to design Mahmoud Moukhtar Sculpture Museum in Cairo.

    In 1970, he completed the buildings of Harrania Art Center.

    In 1974, Ramses Wissa Wassef dies at the age of 63, leaving behind the second generation, i.e., his two daughters, Yoanna and Suzanne, and scores of his apprentices and disciples.

    "TO BE PART OF NATURE AND LET NATURE BE PART OF YOU"… that was the philosophy of Ramses Wissa Wassef in his life and artistic practices. This philosophy is reflected in his architectural designs, using materials belong to the surrounding environment, as well as in all the artistic aspects practiced at his Harrania Art Center, including tapestry, pottery and Batik.

    He first applied this approach when he began to teach the children of Harrania how to weave, then let them improvise their own motifs guided by their virgin imaginations without outer influence.

    He believed that human freedom never has as much meaning and value as when it allows the creative power of the child to come into action. Whereas all children are endowed with a creative power which includes as astonishing variety of potentialities. This power is necessary for the child to build his own existence.

    All the weaving works had to be done without the aid of any outer influence. Even the most complicated pieces of work, which took many months to complete, were improvised on the loom and arose from every day-life impressions. Wassef believed that in spite of all risks, a work of art had to be conceived and executed directly in its material.

    To depend on a design or a sketch was a round about method which dissociated and weakened the act of artistic creation. Wassef summed up the importance of this method by his saying : "The laborious effort of working directly with the material leads to a constant change in the work of these young artists. The free play of their creative power starts at the mysterious moment when the child seizes instinctively, and in a flash of joy, the idea for the picture that he or she intends to weave".

    To better understand how the tapestries were created, it is important to consider the role played by both Wassef and his wife Sophie. "This role was neither forced nor exclusive, but was played with affection and comprehension."

    For Wassef, hand-weaving was at one time a highly expressive and pure art which is quickly losing ground to machine production. It was his hope to revive the fine sensibility of the craft by making a fresh start with a group of children and simple looms.

    Wassef saw that the "modern architectural revolution", which had hit Cairo, was producing a multiplicity of buildings constructed without any sense of aesthetics but rather for their fast rentability. From this point on, Wassef was firmly resolved to never sacrifice his artistic vision for current trends of construction.

    It was in the course of one of his trips to Upper Egypt that Wassef discovered the beauty of the Nubian villages, where the houses are composed of mudbrick vaults and domes, a style that perpetuates a tradition goes back to the early Egyptian dynasties. This discovery revealed to Wassef the connection he had been seeking with the past.

    "I had just visited Aswan", Wassef commented on this discovery, "where I had been struck by the beauty of the Nubian houses in the villages of the area. I learnt that it was still possible to find bricklayers who could make vaulted roofs for houses. I was extremely excited when I thought that these same methods had existed since the first dynasties of the Pharaohs."

    Upon his return to Cairo, he applied this approach, which became known as "Gorna Architecture or architecture of the poor", at his Harrania Art Center.

    In order to build with vaults and domes, Wassef had originally brought workers from Upper Egypt to construct the first rooms of his Art Center. Wassef's architectural achievements are numerous and various. The best known, in addition to his art center, are Mahmoud Moukhtar's Sculpture Museum in Cairo, two church-cathedrals in Zamalek and Heliopolis, his own house in Agouza…etc.