Vladimir Tretchikoff defied the canons of good taste to become one of the best-selling artists of the 20th century.
Although his exotic, hyper-realistic paintings were rarely seen on museum walls, they were found in suburban living rooms, student digs and lingerie departments all over the world.
His most famous work, The Green Girl (also known as The Blue Lady and The Chinese Girl), is said to have been more widely reproduced than the Mona Lisa. Ordinary people loved it for its naturalism and beguiling mystery; art critics scorned it as the epitome of post-war bad taste; Tretchikoff regarded it as a work of genius.
He made more money in his own lifetime than any other artist bar Picasso.
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— The Daily Telegraph
Naguib Mahfouz
1911-2006, Egyptian writer
Naguib Mahfouz was the first Arabic language writer to win the Nobel prize for literature, and is credited with transforming written Arabic into a vehicle for popular literature. Best known for the three books which comprise his Cairo Trilogy, published in the 1950s, Mahfouz became enormously popular all over the Arab world; but it was only after winning the Nobel prize in 1988 that he became famous in the West. Late in life he aroused the wrath of Islamic militants, and was fortunate to survive an assassination attempt.
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— The Daily Telegraph