Kamel was one of the first Egyptian artists to experiment with surrealism and abstraction. His thoughts were liberated from formal attitudes and took on the poetry of colour.
Fouad Kamel was a member of the Group of Contemporary Egyptian Art established by Hussein Youssef Amin (1904-1984), an offshoot of the Art and Freedom Society (Art et Liberté). Kamel was one of the first Egyptian artists to experiment with surrealism and abstraction. His work displayed a particular inclination to abstraction however, in which colour played an essential role, with different periods of his art characterised by certain colours.
Amin encouraged artists like Kamel and other pioneers to produce art that was uncompromisingly authentic and honest in its portrayal of human suffering and misery, echoing the surrealist attitude. Some of the followers of the Contemporary Art Group were Amin's students, when he had taught drawing in secondary school, and included names such as; Samir Rafi (1926-2004), Abdel Hadi El-Gazzar (1925-1965), Hamed Nada (1924-1990), Kamel Youssef (1890-1971) and others. These artists were influenced by the surrealist philosophy that was deprived of heroic and overly optimistic themes. Instead it was an artform critiquing political oppression and human strife that sought to provide the impetus for radical social progress. The Contemporary Art Group's artists were more zealous than the surrealists that preceded them in instrumentalizing visual arts as a means of reflecting and crystallizing Egyptian national identity and self-determination.
Kamel's art can be divided into his blue, red and yellow periods. His thoughts were liberated from formal attitudes and took on the poetry of colour. He began with surrealism and then moved naturally to expressionism, maintining an organic equilibrium in his canvases. His work did not maintain a purely abstract expressionism but a spontaneous form of abstraction with a tangible essence.