20 - Tahia Halim (1919-2003) | Egyptian

Tahia Halim (1919-2003) | Egyptian Nubian Girl with a Jar, 1978 Oil on Panel Signed: Signed ‘T. Halim’ (lower left); signed and inscribed in Arabic and dated 1978 on the reverse. Dimensions: Artwork: 70 × 50 cm | 27.6 × 19.7 in Provenance: Acquired directly from the artist by an Egyptian collector, Cairo, in the late 1970s. Acquired from the above in 2002. Private Collection, Berlin, Germany. Acquired from the above by the present owner. Condition: Oil on hardboard panel. The impasto is stable and the colours are fresh; minor rubbing at the edges and corners, and some old staining on the reverse of the panel; unframed. Please contact us to request a detailed Condition Report. Conditions of Sale: All lots are sold as is, in the condition described. The condition summary is given as a courtesy; a full condition report is available on request before the sale. Attributions are governed by our Terms and Conditions. All enquiries must be made before bidding; no further information can be provided after the sale. By placing a bid you confirm that you have read and accept our Terms and Conditions in full, as set out in the terms of this sale. Shipping: Aurora & Athena coordinates professional, insured shipping for every purchase through vetted logistics partners: packing, transport, insurance and the export paperwork are arranged on the buyer's behalf and charged at the provider's cost. Buyers are equally welcome to collect in Barcelona or to appoint a carrier of their own. Lots are released once the total purchase price has been received. For shipments outside the EU an export licence may be required and Spanish export duties may apply to certain higher-value works; these are the buyer's responsibility. No export tax applies within the EU. Full shipping and export information is available on request. -- A girl sits cross-legged on the ground, a blue veil over her black hair and an orange dress gathered about her, her hands folded around a large clay jar in her lap. She looks straight out with the wide, almond eyes of a Coptic icon. Behind her rise the white domes of a Nubian village, each topped with a crescent, and three palms lean in from the sides. The figure is built in thick strokes of the knife, blue against orange; the village is scraped back to chalky ochres and greys, so that it reads like a painted wall behind her. Nubia was the great subject of Tahia Halim’s life. In 1962 she travelled up the Nile with the artists sent by the Egyptian Ministry of Culture to record the villages that the High Dam was about to drown, and for the next four decades she painted from that memory: women and children, boats, weddings, the domed houses with their painted doors. This panel of 1978 has all the marks of her mature style, the rough, fresco-like surface, the earth colours she made her own and the monumental stillness of a single figure. It is signed on the front in Latin letters and on the reverse in Arabic with the date, as she marked her paintings of these years.