Salah Taher

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Salah Taher (Arabic: صلاح طاهر‎) was a prominent Egyptian painter. Born on May 12th, 1911, in Cairo, he joined and Graduated from Faculty of Fine Arts, now part of Helwan University.

He worked for some time as a drawing and art teacher in Al-Abaseyya High School in Alexandria. He went on to fame in the 1960s as he was appointed head of the Museum of Modern Arts. In 1962, he was appointed head of the Opera. In 1966, he joined Al-Ahram. He painted more than 35 paintings, for which he received no fee as he stated, for Al-Ahram that decorate the walls of its building. Overall, he painted 15000 paintings and held more than 80 art fairs for his work in Egypt , Venice, New York, San Francisco, Geneva, Beirut, Kuwait and Jeddah.^[1]. He also participated in 67 collective fairs in Egypt.^[2]

He was granted the highest awards in Egypt and internationally, among them in 1961 was the Guggenheim Award. In 2001, he was honored alongside Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz in the soft opening of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, which was entitled “The brush and the pen," by publishing a book about his work.

He remained in the position of the artistic consultant for Al-Ahram till his death. He died, at the age of 95, on February 6th, 2007 of bladder cancer. He is survived by a son, Ayman, who is also a painter, and two grandchildren.^[3]