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Lot Essay
Inji Efflatoun was born in an aristocratic family and amidst an intellectually stimulating and creative circle. Her mother divorced her husband after giving birth to two daughters, Gulberie and Inji, and was determined to support her family on her own. She became the first Egyptian woman designer and was hired to be the stylist of the royal family and of high-ranked aristocrats.
After a miserable period spent in boarding school in a nun's convent, Inji rebelled against this traditional and strict education, and convinced her mother to send her to the Lycée Français to pursue her secondary school studies. When she was just fifteen years old, the great master Mahmoud Saïd, who was already well established in 1939 despite being a full-time judge at the Mixed Courts, visited Inji's family. The young girl's mother showed Saïd the drawings Inji had produced at the time to illustrate poems written by her sister Gulberie. Impressed by her draughtswoman skills, Saïd encouraged Inji to pursue studying art and she soon became the student of the Art and Freedom Society pioneer, Kamel El-Telmissany. He was an art professor back then and he played a pivotal role in encouraging Inji to develop her artistic creativity. She exhibited her works alongside Ramsès Younan, Telmissany, Fouad Kamel, at the Art and Liberty Society show of 1942, the same year she painted this outstanding Surrealist landscape.
The 1940s were Inji's Surrealist period, characterized by these fantastical bare landscapes scattered with ribbon-like trees and invasive roots, swaying in the desert. From 1942 and 1952, Ragheb Ayad, from the elder generation of Cairene artists, was her professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Cairo; some of her fellow students included artists Margot Veillon and Hamed Abdallah. After her first solo show in Cairo in 1952, she developed a growing interest towards her country's social issues and politics. Despite her family's efforts in convincing her to pursue her artistic studies in France, she adamantly refused, explaining the reason why in her memories: 'it was impossible for me to leave Egypt and go to the countries of the foreigners when I was passing by a hard period of Egyptianizing myself, all my life I talked in French. Eighteen years have slipped from my life in this secluded society even my native language I could not talk it to the extent that when I began really frequenting the people of my country I couldn't communicate with them in their language. What a misery I felt un-rooted'.
Inji soon became acquainted with Egypt's left wing in politics, although the communist party in Egypt was banned. She fell in love with a fellow compatriot whom she married but who tragically died only three years later from brain hemorrhage. She turned towards politics as a refuge for her sadness, only to get arrested in 1959 and jailed for four years in several different women prisons. Art critics have argued that the works Inji produced during her time in jail proved to be some her finest examples. The choice of colour, the play on light and shadow, the expressions on the finely sketched faces and the permanent bars of the prison cells all contribute to the work's depth and richness of feeling, that overwhelm the viewer. Dating from the 1940s and 1950s, the collection of six pen and India ink drawings presented by Christie's this season is an exceptional example in showcasing Inji's talents to communicate strong emotions through the power of line and light in a drawing.
After Inji's realease from jail, her works were exhibited in major shows across the globe, in Rome, Berlin, Paris, Moscow, Belgrade, India, USA and she had even presented two works alongside Mahmoud Saïd at the Sao Paulo Biennale in Brazil in 1953-1954.
We thank Mona Saïd and Sherwet Shafei for their help in providing the above information.
After a miserable period spent in boarding school in a nun's convent, Inji rebelled against this traditional and strict education, and convinced her mother to send her to the Lycée Français to pursue her secondary school studies. When she was just fifteen years old, the great master Mahmoud Saïd, who was already well established in 1939 despite being a full-time judge at the Mixed Courts, visited Inji's family. The young girl's mother showed Saïd the drawings Inji had produced at the time to illustrate poems written by her sister Gulberie. Impressed by her draughtswoman skills, Saïd encouraged Inji to pursue studying art and she soon became the student of the Art and Freedom Society pioneer, Kamel El-Telmissany. He was an art professor back then and he played a pivotal role in encouraging Inji to develop her artistic creativity. She exhibited her works alongside Ramsès Younan, Telmissany, Fouad Kamel, at the Art and Liberty Society show of 1942, the same year she painted this outstanding Surrealist landscape.
The 1940s were Inji's Surrealist period, characterized by these fantastical bare landscapes scattered with ribbon-like trees and invasive roots, swaying in the desert. From 1942 and 1952, Ragheb Ayad, from the elder generation of Cairene artists, was her professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Cairo; some of her fellow students included artists Margot Veillon and Hamed Abdallah. After her first solo show in Cairo in 1952, she developed a growing interest towards her country's social issues and politics. Despite her family's efforts in convincing her to pursue her artistic studies in France, she adamantly refused, explaining the reason why in her memories: 'it was impossible for me to leave Egypt and go to the countries of the foreigners when I was passing by a hard period of Egyptianizing myself, all my life I talked in French. Eighteen years have slipped from my life in this secluded society even my native language I could not talk it to the extent that when I began really frequenting the people of my country I couldn't communicate with them in their language. What a misery I felt un-rooted'.
Inji soon became acquainted with Egypt's left wing in politics, although the communist party in Egypt was banned. She fell in love with a fellow compatriot whom she married but who tragically died only three years later from brain hemorrhage. She turned towards politics as a refuge for her sadness, only to get arrested in 1959 and jailed for four years in several different women prisons. Art critics have argued that the works Inji produced during her time in jail proved to be some her finest examples. The choice of colour, the play on light and shadow, the expressions on the finely sketched faces and the permanent bars of the prison cells all contribute to the work's depth and richness of feeling, that overwhelm the viewer. Dating from the 1940s and 1950s, the collection of six pen and India ink drawings presented by Christie's this season is an exceptional example in showcasing Inji's talents to communicate strong emotions through the power of line and light in a drawing.
After Inji's realease from jail, her works were exhibited in major shows across the globe, in Rome, Berlin, Paris, Moscow, Belgrade, India, USA and she had even presented two works alongside Mahmoud Saïd at the Sao Paulo Biennale in Brazil in 1953-1954.
We thank Mona Saïd and Sherwet Shafei for their help in providing the above information.