VISIONS OF EGYPT: WORKS FROM THE COLLECTION OF DR ANGELO GIOE, FORMER ATTACHE OF THE ITALIAN CULTURAL INSTITUTE, CAIRO

Provenance:
Property from the collection of Dr Angelo Gioe, cultural attaché at the Italian Cultural Institute, Cairo 2003-2007
Acquired from Mona Hob, wife of the Egyptian artist and illustrator Hilmy El Touny

"Notwithstanding the historical significance of her art—and the international recognition that has come with a record of seventy-five-plus one-woman shows across continents— Sirry is surprisingly under-studied, and her art is described predominantly in technical terms centered on "color." The quintessence of life and political statements, however, seems to have been ignored, if not entirely missed. Educated in Egypt and Europe, Sirry built one of the most influential careers in twentieth-century modern Arab art.

Divided into three overlapping phases, her paintings blur art and politics as they narrate the story of societies vacillating between triumph and defeat, dignity and humiliation, social justice and inequality. Sirry arguably birthed a new identity that makes no distinction between seeing and militancy. As she fluidly moved between styles, this "childless" grande dame became the national godmother to an entire nation"

- Fatenn Mostafa Kanafani

Gazbia Sirry is one of the many accomplished women artists who have made a mark in the Egyptian arts throughout the twentieth century. She stood out for her dedication to the individual freedom of the Arab woman through her fighting spirit. 

Sirry's ardent enthusiasm for innovation and her openness to international influences made her a vital contributor to the Contemporary Art Group in Cairo. A prolific painter, she has experimented with a range of styles. Her early works resembled illustrations inspired by children's coloring books. But she soon shifted to an Expressionist style in which her use of heavy impasto, quickly applied and violently scratched, explored a thematic revolving around the artist herself or groups of individuals and couples. 

Her figures seem to be struggling to emerge from the whirlpool of life, or have gathered together for sheer survival in an urban environment gone astray.