Sarwat El-Bahr was born in 1944 and has had nearly thirty one-man exhibitions in Egypt, Italy, and Germany. El-Bahr is also active as a critic, curator, and cultural commissioner; having founded the Fekrun Wa Fann Gallery at Alexandria's Goethe Institute (which honored him with a retrospective in 1985). He served on several commissaries responsible for Egypt's participation in international art surveys and festivals, helped establish Egypt's branch of the International Association of Art Critics, and served on the Plastic Arts Committee of Egypt's Supreme Cultural Council.

 

El-Bahr has been awarded first prize in the 13th Biennale of Alexandria, and the 11th Arab Biennial in Kuwait. His work is in the collections of Alexandria's Mahmoud Said Museum and Museum of Fine Arts, Cairo's Opera House, Museum of Modern Art, the Tito Museum in Belgrade, and the Egyptian Embassy in Bonn, among others.