In January 1939 Egyptian poet Georges Henein founded Jama'at al-Fann wa-l-Hurriyah (Art et Libertr), a Cairo-based interdisciplinary Trotskyist movement with an interest in surrealism, whose first manifesto called for solidarity with artists in Europe against the rapid rise of fascism and the threat this posed to artistic production. The following year the group launched its journal al-Tatawwur (Evolution), a publication that despite being short-lived (January- September 1940), brought together many of the critical leftist thinkers in Egypt at the time. While contributors were eclectic in their various practices and interests, many shared a background as cultural producers; Ramsis Yunan, Fuad Kamil, and Kamil al-Tilmisani, all important painters of their generation, were active members of al-Fann wa-l-Hurriyah and their writings featured regularly on the pages al-Tatawwur. Using al-Tatawwur as a departure point, this paper attempts to understand the ways in which contributing artists imagined their simultaneous roles as writers, artists, and critics. By tracing the recurring concerns and preoccupations of the journal's articles, a number of interesting questions arise as to the ways in which these artists imagined their relationship to their audiences and readership. In other words, given the clearly political commitment voiced by members of al-Fann wa-l-Hurriyah, how did these artists/writers define the place of art within larger socio-economic debates of the time and who did they imagine to be their interlocutors, both on a local and global levell What do they consider the role of artist to be within such a historical contextn What are the links that are articulated between questions of aesthetics and ideological concernsc Ultimately such a reading is concerned with examining the ways in which the categories of the "artistic" and "political" were understood within the context of 1940s Egypt.