Effat Nagui

Collection of the Artist
Thence by descent the present owner

Condition: The work is in relatively good condition with some minor cracking throughout but mainly at the edges of the wood panel.
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Born to an aristocratic Alexandrian family in 1905, Effat Nagui was raised surrounded by the arts. Her brother Mohamed Nagui, a pioneer of Modern Egyptian Art, offered her an introduction to this majestic world and was famously quoted to say prior to his death in 1956; "You have surpassed me...I remained a prisoner in my academic discipline and you have soared to the horizons of modernism with its wide ranging and unlimited scope." A disciple of the French artist Andre Lhote, Effat studied under his tutelage in Paris, and undertook her first trip to Nubia in the 1950s with his supervision.

Effat's painting depicting the Aswan High Dam isn't only monumental due to its historical content; it is also where she explores the varying latitudes and variety of modern art. Effat was selected as part of a group of artists by the Egyptian Ministry of Culture in 1963 to visit Upper Egypt to document the remnants of Ancient Nubia before it was to be flooded by the Dam waters; as well as the progress of the Aswan High Dam. The use of geometrical construction of the dam in the painting represents the departure of the rich and lively culture of Ancient Nubia to a more constricted and formally unified Egypt.

Nagui creates a transcendental piece through the employment of strict lines, but also softening these stringent effects with a rich yellow; a colour that embodies the Nile Valley and the hills of Aswan. This striking work elicits a need to hark to the past and aspire for the future; where Egypt is developing and growing while clinging to her resplendent history.

Effat's abstract representation of the Aswan High Dam provides a glimpse to the intensity of the change transpiring in Egypt in the early days of the Revolution. Effat was committed throughout her life to promote the folkloric heritage and traditions of Egypt. An aspiration, as she sought to separate herself from the didactic lines of pictorial modernism and to demonstrate the vast riches and diversity of the Egyptian identity and culture through a new realm of art.  This painting is part of a series of seven paintings on the subject of the Aswan High Dam; one is housed in the Museum of Modern Egyptian Art in Cairo.