Ihab Bishai was born in Suez, Egypt, At the age of 9 his family was relocated to Alexandria where he was raised in a moderate educated family. According to his mother he started drawing since early childhood as his only passion. As he grew up between the tranquillity of both the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, he found the vast expanse of shorelines and clear skies as his first inspirations and at the age 16 he was introduced by a family friend to the famous Egyptian painter, Seif Wanly, who took Bishai under his wings for two years to attend his private painting and drawing classes.
He immigrated in 1985 to the US in order to pursue his artistic endeavours. There he attended the Philadelphia College of Arts and Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in order to strengthen his abilities and knowledge of arts. He was then able to develop his own style being always in doubt about the modern American movements, in particular abstract expressionism and the New York school which remained as the basic starting point for almost all art that he examined and that he learned. Bishai was able to obtain his first one man show at the Glasborough State College Gallery in New Jersey. Over the years he gained a body of collectors who admired his work and style, but he always believed that his art and inner inspirations did not belong to the nature of the environment and society around him, and he always felt not reaching his potentials and not being connected through his work to the viewers around him.
In 2001 he moved to Helsinki, Finland, As the surroundings and the general attitude towards life change around him in particular the serenity and reality of the Scandinavian countries and in Finland in particular, he started to find his true direction in art.
Today the work of Ihab Bishai has developed into a visual statement that invites the viewer to re-think the realities and the relations between the human being and the universe around him. His figures show this fragility and weightlessness of the figure, staged in a vast expanse space sometimes in loneliness and sometimes in grouped isolation. “As we develop our strengths in life, Bishai says, building wealth, high rises, fame, fortune, power and domination, we do not realize how fragile we are”.
Bishai also found after moving closer to Egypt and during more frequent visits there, his inspirations from the wealth of history and warmth of his home land.
He believes and always has in the spiritual aspects of art and also in the realities of it which changes and evolves according to the time period during which it is created.