A Mad Woman

This large painting is among the most the most self-consciously surreal of El-Gazzar's folkloric period. Charging towards us in a trance-like state is a crazy woman, her gloved clawlike hands held far above her head, her hair reaching almost to her ankles. The covered alley through which she runs, a familiar sight in the older quarters of Cairo, is here shown with distorted perspective and is crammed with symbolic objects, becoming a claustrophobic trap. Enigmatic details crowd the composition- the totemic head at the base of the wooden column on the right; the ornate box at the top of this column from which an anchor is suspended; the huge key hanging on the wall of the left, the animal skin rug strewn across the floor and, echoing its shape, the bald-headed prostrate figure lying on the ground. Together these perpetuate the state of unease.