MOHSEN SHAALAN (EGYPTIAN 1951-2014)
Man and Lady in Chains
1996
signed and dated in Arabic Mohsen Shaalan 96 (lower left)
oil on canvas, framed
70 x 100 cm (27 1/2 x 39 1/3 in)

Mohsen Shalaan was born in Cairo on 14 April 1951 and received his BA in Art and Education in 1974. He held several positions at the Ministry of Culture, the last of which was his appointment in 2006 as Head of the Fine Arts Sector, a body responsible for several art institutions and museums, including the Mahmoud Khalil Museum, home to one of the most significant collections of 19th and 20th-century European art in the Middle East. He was ousted from his position in the Ministry of Culture following the 2010 theft of Van Gogh's Poppy Flowers from the Mahmoud Khalil Museum. He later served one year in prison on charges stemming from the theft, which prosecutors argued was made possible by insufficient security under his watch.

PROVENANCE
Dr. Mohamed Said Farsi

Dr. Mohamed Said Farsi (1934-2019) was one of the world’s great patrons of Egyptian art. In 1956 he was one of only 35 students from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia sent abroad for further education. Having obtained a BA in Architecture and Town Planning from the University of Alexandria in Egypt, he returned to Saudi Arabia and in 1972 became the Mayor of Jeddah. During his lifetime, he assembled the most important private collection of Modern Egyptian art.

His collection became the first of its type to be fully documented with the publication of ‘A Museum in a Book: The Farsi Art Collection – the “Egyptian Works” owned by Dr. Mohammed Said Farsi’ by the critic and scholar Dr. Sobhy Sharouny (published 1998).