A leading artist of Egypt’s modern art history, Gazbia Sirry has had a prolific and wide-ranging career. Graduating from Cairo’s Higher Institute of Art Education for Women in 1949, Sirry completed further studies in Rome, Paris, and London. Her receptiveness to international influences created an artistic language blending traditions of Egypt with European modernism, which made her a key contributor to the Contemporary Art Group in Cairo. Sirry’s early practice of realism evolved into an Expressionist style post 1967 with her powerful and gestural applications of paint, use of heavy impasto and forceful scratches. The present works take on an esoteric essence as she expressed the joys and anxieties experienced by Egypt’s social-political environment.

Gazbia Sirry has exhibited widely including the Venice Biennale (1952; 1956; 1958; 1984) and received the Prix de Rome for painting in 1952. Her works are held in the collections of the Modern Art Museum, Cairo; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris and the National Museum for Women in the Arts, Washington D.C.