Arab-American artist Mahmoud Ali Gadalla “Marvelous Gadalla” was born in the “Land of Peace” for a Palestinian father and an Egyptian mother, and grew up in Kuwait. M. Gadalla has been living unique art perspectives with his soul as well as mind and sensations since early childhood. As the case with many creative minds, his artistic talents were recognized by his teachers as early as during the kindergarten and elementary school years. Due to his distinguished talents, M. Gadalla was granted unlimited access to art workshops in his junior and senior high schools. Certainly, M. Gadalla well facilitated school art workshops and began receiving awards for exhibiting his paintings and sculptors in Kuwaiti national school art competitions. Furthermore, the dynamical teenager artist ‘M. Gadalla’ expanded his creativities to depicting culture and folklore through painting wall murals. Doubtlessly, M. Gadalla wished to fortify his artistic talents with scholar knowledge and, thus, enrolled in the College of Fine Arts at the Egyptian University of Helwan. Five years later, M. Gadalla ranked first of his class and received his Bachelor’s Degree with an Honor Award in Decorative and Fine Arts with Specialty in Interior Architecture. Additionally, the University of Helwan further honored M. Gadalla when retained his distinguished academic art work as a special collection in its affiliated art museum. Nevertheless, M. Gadalla’s most valuable honor was having his character and identity influenced and shaped by world-prominent scholar artists.

Since graduation, M. Gadalla has designed and constructed numerous well-recognized palaces, villas, buildings, monuments, and exhibits. He has been participating in several national and international visual art exhibitions as well:

• The Kuwaiti Society of Formative Arts Annual Exhibits in Salat Dhahiyat Abdullah Al-Salem Al-Subah (1975 – 1989)
• Exhibits of the General Union of Palestinian Plastic Artists: Kuwait (1975 – 1989), Morocco (1976), Brag (1984), Bahrain (1985), Egypt (1985 – 1989), Japan (1986), Greece (1986), United Arab Emirates (1988), and Tunisia (1989)
• The 7th Exhibit of the Societies of Middle Eastern Formative Artists (1981)
• The National Egyptian Art Exhibition in Alexandria (1985 – 1987) and Cairo (1985 – 1989)
• Private fine art show exhibitions at the Alef Art and Arabesque Gallery in Kuwait (1986 – 1988).

M. Gadalla immigrated to the United States of America shortly after the end of the Gulf War in 1991. In the following years, M. Gadalla’s art work was featured in various American art venues such as the D’Elegence International Gallery (1991 – 1994), the Middle Eastern Center at the University of Utah (1992), Kimball Center in Park City (1996), and Tivoli Gallery (1996 – 2000) and Fables Fine Art Gallery (2002 – 2004) in Salt Lake City. Since Early 1990’s, M. Gadalla has been an active member of the General Union of American Artists.

Gadalla’s art life has extended through seven schools so far:

• Period I – Imperatorism (The Beginning);
• Period II – Symbolism (Since 1973);
• Period III – Supernova “Sondos wa Istabraq” (Since 1980);
• Period IV – Inspirism (Since 1983);
• Period V – Dynamism (Since 1985);
• Period VI – Dynamism-Crystalism (Since 1995);
• Period VII – Big Bang (The Hidden School).