Gazbia Sirry

The Egyptian painter Gazbia Sirry, born in Cairo in 1925 and deceased in 2021, frames her work within a reflection on the possibility of a modern Egyptian art. After graduating from the Higher Institute of Fine Arts for Young Women in Cairo in 1948, she continued her training in Marcel Gromaire’s studio in 1951, then in Rome in 1952 and in London, where she received a postgraduate diploma from the Slade School of Fine Art in 1955. Her early works brought her close to the Groupe d’art moderne, which maintains that Western means of pictorial expression can contribute to the emergence of an Egyptian art that is both modern and authentic.

Women and the working classes recur in her subject matter; the AWARE entry connects these representations with nationalist iconography. Her relationship with the Nasser regime is described as complex, as the regime had imprisoned her husband. She resigned from her teaching positions at Helwan College of Fine Arts and the American University in Cairo after nude drawing classes were discontinued for religious reasons.

Her international career included participation in the São Paulo Biennials in 1953 and 1963, the Venice Biennales in 1956, 1958 and 1984, the Pan-African Festival in Algiers in 1969 and FESTAC in Lagos. From the 1970s onwards, her works were often presented in diplomatic contexts; she notably held a series of solo exhibitions at the Goethe-Institut in Cairo between 1970 and 1987. She lived in Tunisia in 1984 and 1985. She continued painting late in life, including landscapes and street scenes in watercolour, a medium she used consistently; at the age of 85, at the time of the 2011 revolution, she also produced a series of works in an increasingly minimalist style. An Egyptian Family, an oil on canvas dated 1955 and measuring 134 × 68 cm, is reproduced in the AWARE entry with a credit to Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha.

Works recorded at auction