Essay from Federico Wardal

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Young woman with reading glasses and a blue jean jacket sits and bends over a palette of paints. She's at a table with red wine and flowers and some watercolors.

Nour Kassem (Woods), Prominent Young Egyptian Painter 

I am proud to present in this internationally appreciated magazine the very special, young, prominent Egyptian painter Nour Kassem (Woods). 

Pencil drawing of a blue vase with yellow flowers on a brown table with blue sky outside a window.

Nour says about herself: “I am a fast kinetic person, who wants to work, do activities, and most importantly, create.” The common opinion is that an artist must be focused on a specific artistic sector to give the best. This is not always the case and it is not so in the case of Nour who lives to dance, paint, and even golf, drawing from each of these activities creative, joyful and extremely professional energy with which she nourishes these activities. So Nour does not remain seated or standing to paint but wins trophies dancing tango and salsa and winning golf tournaments. Then she returns to painting, often immersed in the nature and beauty of El Gouna, a wonderful lagoon city on the Red Sea founded only a few decades ago by entrepreneurs Naguib and Samih Sawiris, the creator of El-Gouna International Film Festival (Cinema for Humanity) directed by Marianne Khouri, granddaughter of the legendary film director Youssef Chahine. 

Green poster for Nour Woods at the Nile Art Gallery. There's a photo of Noor with glasses and a white top on the left and a photo of a light skinned man with dark glasses and a black jacket and pink tie with a green and black dotted background.

In fact Nour has her first collective exhibition in 2014 right in EL Gouna at TUBerlin / German University. Theme: By Diversified Gouna Artists.  Then her first solo art exhibition was also in El-Gouna in 2015 at the luxurious Ocean View Hotel with the congratulations of Mr. Samih Sawiris. Other big “solos“ of Nour were in 2017 and 2022 at the Nile Art Gallery in Cairo.

Nour, with short dark curly hair, glasses, a red top and blue jean jacket, next to her smiling and gray-haired mother in a gray jacket. They're drinking Coke.

Nour lives in Cairo, where she has her studio in Heliopolis, but at the moment Nour, with her mother the beautiful Mrs. Mona Safey, is again in El Gouna to paint, where the dialogues of the films presented at El Gouna International FF still echo. But there is also a cinema debut for Nour! A color version and the other in black and white about the famous director Youssef Chahine will appear in the USA-Italian Art Doc Thriller: “Ancient Taste of Death” directed by the Italian director Antonello Altamura about the Hollywood Golden Age and ancient Egypt, with the Egyptian star Wael El-Ouni. Nour, among her 400 paintings, has a series of paintings inspired by Egyptian superstars like Omar Sherif. Probably Nour’s art will be exhibited along the red carpet walk of the sumptuous palace of El Gouna International Film Festival in 2025. Some SF art galleries have expressed strong interest in Nour, whose painting meets the super lively and colorful style of the city of the magical Golden Gate Bridge.