Tagore festival opens in Cairo

India is organising a five-day cultural festival in Egypt to commemorate the 157th birth anniversary of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore.

An exhibition on the paintings of Tagore titled Rabindranath Tagore: Rhythm in Colours' will be held at the Museum of Ahmed Shawky at Giza as part of the Tagore festival which began today.

The festival is being organised by the Maulana Azad Centre for Indian Culture (MACIC), the cultural wing of the Indian Embassy in Cairo.

Like the last two years, we shall continue the tradition of commemorating Tagore's birth anniversary in Egypt. We believe that there are certain iconic figures who have played a very important role in linking the hearts and minds of the people of India and the people of Egypt. Tagore and Gandhi are obviously two great instances, India's Ambassador to Egypt Sanjay Bhattacharyya told PTI.

Spurred by a spirit of inventiveness, Tagore's paintings merged the familiar with the unknown. Landscapes are the smallest output to Tagore's art.

After he developed his love for painting, Tagore described the visible world around him as a vast procession of forms.

Most of the landscapes he painted showed nature bathed in the evening light, skies and forms coagulating into ominous silhouettes.

His landscapes invoke mystery and a sense of disquiet and silence. Tagore did not name his paintings, but by leaving them untitled he freed them from the limits of literary imagination.

He wished his viewers to read the paintings in their own light and admire them in individual ways. His painted faces speak of vast human experience and intrinsic human emotion.

His faces speak of various moods: mysterious, brooding, dramatic, and romantic; of wonderment, fear, and melancholia.

During the festival, a music concert and a lecture will be organised.