HOUSTON.- One of Egypt´s most prominent contemporary artists, Farouk Hosny, who also serves as the country´s Minister of Culture, will make his Museum of Fine Arts, Houston exhibition debut on May 10. Farouk Hosny: The Energy of Abstraction will include approximately 20 abstract, large format paintings, on view until September 1 at the museum´s Caroline Wiess Law Building.

"Farouk Hosny has long been a cultural force, both in his career as a painter and as Egypt´s Minister of Culture," said Frances Marzio, the MFAH´s coordinating curator. "The museum is pleased to present Hosny´s vivid and lively abstract paintings, giving many audiences their first taste of contemporary Egyptian art."

Born in 1942 in Alexandria, Egypt, Hosny began painting as a young man, initially concentrating on landscapes and seascapes. After graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts in Alexandria in 1964, he was appointed as director of El-Anfoushi´s Culture Palace in the mid-1960s. Hosny served as the cultural attaché and director of the Egyptian Cultural Center in Paris beginning in 1971, then went on to direct the Egyptian Academy in Rome from 1979 until 1987. Hosny returned to Cairo in 1987 when he was appointed to his current post as Egypt´s Minister of Culture.

On the occasion of Hosny´s exhibition in 1999 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Director Philippe de Montebello wrote that "his works reflect his internationalization of modernist trends but his pictures are always infused with his innate connections with the light and color of his native land."

Composed with exquisite balance, enigmatic imagery and a dynamic palette, Hosny´s paintings speak the language of the modern world. Through his use of abstraction, Hosny has transformed the eternal signs of his native country into restless, calligraphic gestures using vivid colors evocative of the Egyptian landscape: the blacks of sudden nightfall, the blues of sea water, the whites of limestone, the violets of the Sinai mountain range, the burning ochres of the desert, the green of the flowing Nile, the grays of ancient stones, and the oranges of flaming sunsets.

Hosny has continued to flourish as a painter throughout his life, experimenting with informal art in the late 1960s before ultimately honing his focus on abstraction. He has exhibited works in numerous exhibitions in Alexandria and Cairo, as well as in Paris, Rome, Vienna, Bahrain, Kuwait City, Tokyo, Washington, D.C. and New York.

The exhibition is curated by Carmine Siniscalco of Rome and is supported by Arts and Exhibitions International. This will be the exhibition´s second U.S. showing following a recent run at the Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale.