Hussein Youssef Amin (1904 – 1984, born in Cairo, Egypt) was a painter and a teacher who belongs to the second generation of the modern Egyptian Art Movement; he taught some of the most ground-breaking Egyptian artists. He founded the Contemporary Art Group in the 1940s. In 1948, he won the first modern art prize at the Sao Paolo Biennale. As a teacher, in 1944, he created a circle of students, with artists Hamed Nada, Ibrahim Mas’ouda, Abdel-Hadi El-Gazzar, Maher Ra’ef, Kamal Youssef, Mogli (Salem El-Habshi) and Samir Raf’I who also became stars of the 20th century Egyptian Modern Art. Collectively, their attitude towards painting was expressionistic — to paint in an intuitive and emotional manner, to work on both the detail and the whole picture, balancing the harmony of colour and volume. And the subject was Egypt. Amin taught them to paint rather than imitate. by Al Masar Gallery