Habib Gorgi

He taught graduates of the Fine and Applied Arts Colleges to prepare them to become arts teachers and get their National Teacher's Certificate. He established the Art Advocates Society in 1928 for artist investigating Egyptian identity through art, and watercolors in particular. His Spontaneous Sculpture School and the Textile Drawing School was continued by son-in-law Ramses Wissa Wassef in Harraneya. He represented Egypt in conferences on art teaching in Paris from 1936, and his educational experiments became an inspiration to major international writers, including Wilhelm Viola, in his book The Art of the Child. During his scholarship period in England, he specialized in watercolours. Habib Georghe was interested in the aesthetics of Egyptian art, and adopted this through his call for painting Egyptian landscapes, and through his establishing the Folk Art School, where he fostered a number of spontaneous artists, including Sayeda Massak, Samira Hosny, Yehya Bu Seri', Bodour Girgis, who were all talented in environmental sculpture, in the period from 1938 to 1951.

He built a Folk Art School on the principles of the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung concerning the collective unconscious. Gorgi postulated that the Egyptian genius that had brought forth the Pharaonic, Coptic and Islamic art traditions was still present in the being of modern Egyptians, as they were interacting with the same environment, society, climate and genetic factors. If a child, not exposed to the patterns of Western schooling, was given the chance for self-expression through clays, or sculpture, or textiles, the inherent genius would burst forth. His experiment worked, and was acknowledged and admired both in Egypt and abroad.

The Egyptian Museum of Modern Art in Cairo. Habib Gorgi Museum of the Ramses Wissa Wassef Art Centre, Giza, Egypt.