Fathi Hassan is an Egyptian painter and sculptor of Nubian origin, born in 1957, and a prominent figure in contemporary African art.

As a teenager, he began studying art at the Kerabia Middle School in Cairo. In 1979, at the age of 22, he moved to Italy on a scholarship from the Italian Cultural Institute in Cairo to attend the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples. During this time, he frequented Lucio Amelio’s gallery, where he met and interacted with several important artists such as James Brown, Joseph Beuys, Mimmo Paladino, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Richard Long, as well as the Neapolitan group Falso Movimento.

In 1984, he graduated with a thesis on the influence of African art on Cubism. In 1988, American art critics Dan Cameron and Giovanni Carandente selected him as the sole African artist for the 23rd Venice Biennale, where he participated in the Spazio Aperto 1988 section. Fathi Hassan thus became the first artist of African origin to exhibit at the Venice Biennale.

The Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., cataloged his work and included him among the artists featured in Textures, Word and Symbol in Contemporary African Art. From 1983 to 2000, he gained the attention of various international critics, including Filiberto Menna, Achille Bonito Oliva, Enrico Crispolti, Rose Issa, Maurita Poole, K. Goncharov, and E. Harney. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City cataloged him as part of the Youth Generation artists.

Fathi Hassan currently works with the Richard Saltoun Gallery in London and Rome.