Omar el-Nagdi, The one, 1960, Oil on Canvas, 154 x 152 cm.

Omar El-Nagdi was an Egyptian abstract expressionist and cubist painter. He was born in 1931 and passed away in 2019. El Nagdi earned his bachelor's degree in fine arts from Cairo's Faculty of Fine Arts (now Helwan University) in 1953 and continued his education in Russia, Italy and graduated from the Academy of Venice in 1965. El Nagdi's work consists of rhythmic abstractions relying on the repetition of the Arabic numeral for 'one' (wahed), which has the same shape as the first letter of the Arabic alphabet, alef. In this painting El-Nagdi employs the overlapping and repetition technique in this painting by using number one. To make the number stand out, El- Nagdi uses a light color for the background and a dark color for the number. There is no way to tell whether the numbers begin on the left or on the right. Furthermore, some of these numbers are clearly visible, while others are obscured by overlap, making it difficult to notice them.