
Noor Soussi
Head of Department
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Group Head
Provenance:
Property from the collection of AbdulMagid Breish, London
Published:
Louisa Macmillan, Mysa Kafil-Hussain et others, In Vested Interests: from Passion to Patronage, The AbdulMagid Breish Collection of Arab Art, Skira, Milan, 2020
Rabab Nemr's work has been widely exhibited across her native Egypt and abroad for many decades, during which her style, technique and medium have developed over time. Three of her works in the Breish Collection come from an early point in her career (the late 1970s and 1980s), when she was depicting larger-than-life figures reminiscent of mythological legends and local folklore, naively rendered in pastel shades. The figures stare, wide-eyed and seemingly frozen in time, subdued with a sense of playful melancholy in their colourful worlds. By 2006, Nemr had shifted from oil on canvas to ink on paper, working on a far larger scale, and she approaches colour differently, incorporating bright, neon hues into scenes that feel rooted in Egyptian culture (specifically coastal life in her hometown, Alexandria). In her own words, she is "weaving the surface of the painting", in pen and ink on paper. With a contemporary style akin to pointillism, Nemr's remarkable attention to detail breathes life into her luminous artworks, and contemporary Egyptian art in general.
- Mysa Kafil-Hussain