EFFAT NAGi

Effat Nagi (1905-1994) is one of the pioneers of modern Egyptian art. She was born in Alexandria to an aristocratic family, the younger sister of the artist and diplomat Mohamed Nagi. She was deeply influenced by her brother, who was promoting ancient Egyptian art to be taught in school curricula. Between 1947 and 1950, the Nagi siblings studied painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome and she continued to study with the French artist and art critic André Lhote. Her husband, Saad El Khadem, was also a seminal person in her life, introducing her to Egyptian myths, legends and folk art in general.

Her early work used simple and abstract forms, but was not limited to a square or rectangular canvases. She multiplied the surfaces, transforming them into box-like objects. Nagi experimented with materials such as wood and leather in collages and assemblages, created mystical and magical works from the items she would gather. She relied on the mystical symbolism in ancient Egyptian, Coptic and folk art.

Effat Nagi’s concern with the sacred rendered her work primitive-looking. She was preoccupied with the idea that an object loses its cultural significance once it is removed from its original location, and becomes a mere collectible. Nagi’s art was deeply guided by her brother’s nationalism and her husband’s historic research. Continuously searching for a sense of identity, she created works that would resolve the disparate connection between history and myth, and art and culture.

Effat Nagi

Tal Al Amarna , 1965

Acrylic on wood

87 x 107 cm

Effat Nagi

Pharoanic Black Cats , undated

Oil on wood

50 x 70 cm

Mohamed Nagi (1888-1956) was a diplomat and an artist who was part of a group surrounding Mahmoud Mokhtar called La Chimère . Nagi portrayed Egyptians, within their ethnic variety and believed in the social mission of art; he continuously tried to bridge the gap with his ancestors.

Nagi studied law in Lyon, France and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. He was also taught, like his sister, by André Lhote and visited Claude Monet’s gardens in Giverny, which deeply influenced him.

In 1925, he was assigned by the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Brazil and France, and a few years later, served in Ethiopia, where the culture inspired him to produce his masterpiece Bayaa El Geloud (The Leather Seller).

In 1937, he was appointed as the first Egyptian to head the School of Fine Arts, and two years later, he became the director of the Museum of Modern Art. In 1947, Nagi became the cultural attaché in Rome and managed the Egyptian Academy of Fine Arts in the same city.

Nagi spent most of his life traveling, even within Egypt, where he set up the Luxor and Alexandria ateliers. He also spent some time in South America, where he was acquainted with mural paintings and became a muralist himself. One of his works, the Renaissance of Egypt, was executed on the walls of the Senate in Cairo.

Nagi’s work show his struggle to resolve the political and cultural ambiguities present in the society, but also within himself, and relentlessly searching for a national artistic identity.