Colour Enchanter

A Swede painter who un-ceasingly drew Egypt revealing all its faces. Her works are regarded as a unique document reflecting the daily life on the Nile banks.

Margo Vilon was born in Cairo in 1907 to a Swede father and an Austrian Mother. At the age of nine , she decided to become a painter , and when she was at 16, she moved to Paris , between 1923 to 1932 . to study fine arts and to become sated with the emanating artistic atmosphere of the 1920s and 1930s. This allowed her to communicate with the artistic environment of that period, where Bicasso , Barague, De lonay and Chagall lived , and she managed to promote her own artistic skills.

Yet , she preferred to return to Egypt , which stirs up her emotions and inspirers her; and since 1935 she has not stopped drawing, Sculpturing and portraying. She devoted her life to registering with her brush and pen the simple Egyptian life.

Vilon derived most of her themes from the inspiring streets of Egypt, she drew the streets as it is ,, simple and full of life. The colors she uses are sometimes hot bright while some other times they are pale such as the pale blue of the Nile in the heat of the sun. She drew expressing some various shapes in different degrees of yellow. Hence , colors and movement are among the tools she skillfully and meticulously used in expressing her view in an impressive way.

Her works are of amazing variety and richness.. The fifty exhibitions she held in Switzerland, Paris, London and Egypt are her witnesses.

In Ma'adi, at the garden surrounding the studio, in her own villa she kept a splendid Collection of beautiful rocks and portions of fossilized tree-stems and shells she gathered during her safari in the Egyptian deserts.

Being in love with painting, Vilon decorated her studio walls with paintings of the hard nature and peasants with strong arms and muscular sturdy legs.


She was fascinated by their beautiful and clear moves and by the usual sagacity of the Egyptian labor, such as the potters, , callers “A-Mo'zen” for prayers at night, woman baking and other toileting the bride for marriage. She was also fascinated by the Felucca boats floating in the Nile. Although she spend a while in Europe, Vilon's true love to Egypt was revealed by her incessant painting over 60 years.

She devoated most of her works to recording movements and the deep colors of Egypt. On 7 July 1996 , she said; ”As the taxi was leading me to Cairo , I realize that I‘ve badly missed its green and yellow mix. She added; “ There are moments that should be recorded and elaborated.. harvesters dance during weeding parties. Only veteran's eyes could recorded all such scenes, forms and store it up to be painted in the future”

The passionate Maargo Vilon did not relinquish any things she came across; villages, the Oases, the Nile , the desert, the cities, the animals, the people …men, women and children, stagnant and live nature, even her garden in Ma'adi, all were caught in her paints.

Some years ago, Vilon held a wonderful exhibition at the Italian culture center, where she presented a research on the Red Sands, as she exhibited different colors of sands, starting with the white and ending with the black and between these two colors we have the red, and the yellow.

On 9 June 2003, the legend of Margo Vilon has turned off leaving behind a magnificent legacy, which mostly presents Egypt: her favorite homeland.