Islamic, Orientalist & Middle Eastern Art

Sotheby's Specialists Highlights of the Al Zayani Family Collection

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Sotheby's Specialists Highlights of the Al Zayani Family Collection

  • Gazbia Sirry The Garden (1959)
    In the Garden can be interpreted as a ‘coming of age’ artwork, depicting different stages in the life of a woman, cadenced by fluctuating relationships and shifting notions of self. Each stage occupies a different part of the canvas, moving gradually from the back to the foreground, and is isolated by a geometrical vignette whose shape mimics the dynamic at play in each segment of life.
    In The Garden sees Gazbia Sirry employing her characteristic Expressionist style as a way to release buried childhood life episodes. Adopting a bird’s eye view stance, she soars over her memories, benefiting from a panoramic assessment of the framework composed by herself and the people around her.
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  • Mahmoud Said Study (portrait) (circa 1920s)
    Regarded as the founder of Modern Egyptian art, at a time of Egypt's intellectual renaissance (al-Nahda), Mahmoud Saïd is one of the most celebrated artists of the time - and a personal favourite of the collector, Abdulrahman Al Zayani. This portrait, most probably of the artist himself, provides a rare glimpse into this extraordinary visionary’s way of working and powers of observation.
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    Fahrelnissa Zeid Erbil: Réalités Nouvelles (Circa 1960 - 1965)
    One of the first women to attend the Academy of Fine Arts in Istanbul in 1919,  Fahrelnissa Zeid became a forerunner of Turkish Modernism before turning to the avant-garde as part of the Parisian post war art scene. Born into an aristocratic Turkish family, Zeid became Iraqi royalty by marriage, but first and foremost is remembered as an artist.
    Painted shortly after the coup d’etat which overtook the Iraqi monarchy and in which members of her husband’s family were killed, the present painting, titled Erbil: Realites Nouvelles embraces a particular significance. A reference to the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, and translating to 'New Realities', the painting is reminiscent of Zeid’s masterpieces from the late 1940s/early 1950s and is emblematic of the artist’s slow recovery and unwavering belief in the healing power of art.
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  • Farid Belkahia Untitled (1981)
    The present work by Farid Belkahia is emblematic of the artist’s focus on craftsmanship. During his tenure as the Head of the Ecole des Beaux Arts de Casablanca, Belkahia, alongside other pioneering artists such as Mohammed Melehi, embarked on a quest to reform the way art was taught. He aimed to reconnect his teaching methods with Moroccan culture, while relieving his students from the excessive academic pressure he suffered from while in Paris. The present work also draws on Berber and universal symbols, to create a trance-like effect.
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  • WestImage - Art Digital Studio
    Behjat Sadr Untitled (circa 1964)
    Behjat Sadr is one of only a handful of women artists to have received international accolades for their work. Her powerful, unusually constructed abstract paintings such as the present example have been selected for the Venice Biennale and for gallery and museum exhibitions in around the world.
    This painting is from her ‘rhythmic years’, during the 1960s and 1970s, when the artist experimented by working mainly with her fingers and painting knives. In this way, she kept a distance with traditional methods and as such was not confined to the decorative value of abstract geometry.
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  • Kathleen Hoare
    Fouad Kamel Untitled (The Drinker) (1941)
    Fouad Kamel was a pioneer of the Egyptian Surrealist Art & Liberty movement, created on the eve of World War II. It was a politically and artistically engaged movement, which connected with wider global concerns whilst echoing Egyptian issues of the time. Painted when the artist was only 22, this work uses Cubist and Surrealist symbolism, such as the fragmented body, to convey the anxiety of impending war.
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  • Hamed Nada Untitled (The Singers) (1990)
    Hamed Nada was a prominent figure of the Contemporary Art Group, renowned for conjuring symbols and beliefs and turning them into a wide range of expressive characters. Although his earlier compositions were usually tidy and monochromatic, Nada slowly started to lose his sense of hearing with age, and his paintings became filled with colours, rhythm, and depictions of music and dances.
    In the present work, singers and dancers are rushing around the scene, seemingly attempting to outperform roosters perched on their legs and arms. In French, 'le chant du coq', (‘the rooster’s song’) is an expression signifying the break of dawn. Perhaps this is an allegory of the singer’s efforts to out-sing the animals, symbolically fighting against the end of the night - and thus the closing of their show.
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  • Omar el Nagdi Alif (1961)
    One of Egypt’s most celebrated artists, Omar El Nagdi is renowned for his calligraphic period which he initiated in the 1960s when he began studying mosaics at The Academy of Fine Arts in Venice. The consistent repetition of a letter, in this case ‘Alif’, channels the meditative elements of Sufism and provides an insight into the artist’s personal exploration of this religious practice. 
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