GAZBIA SIRRY (EGYPTIAN, B. 1925)
PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE EGYPTIAN COLLECTION
GAZBIA SIRRY (EGYPTIAN, B. 1925)

Martyr

Details
GAZBIA SIRRY (EGYPTIAN, B. 1925)
Martyr
signed 'Gazbia' and signed again and dated in Arabic (centre left); inscribed in Arabic (on the reverse)
oil on canvas
53 x 19½in. (135 x 49.5cm.)
Painted in 1961
Literature
Mursi Saad El-Din , Gazbia Sirry Lust for Color , Cairo 1998 (illustrated, no. 17)

Lot Essay

Many of Sirry's paintings from the 1950s and 1960s carried important social messages. This painting addresses the poverty and famine in Africa, the emaciated figure barely clinging to the branch.
Gazbia Sirry was a member of the Group of Modern Art, a movement which sought to express an Egyptian identity, formed at the time of the Egyptian revolution in 1952. In the words of a fellow member, the artist Hamed Oweis (b. 1919), they "rejected 'surrealism', because it was essentially a rebellion, or an art which did not aim at the consciousness of the people at large" (L. Karnouk, Modern Egyptian Art 1910-2003, Cairo, 1999, p. 80).

More from International Modern and Contemporary Art

View All
View All