Two early 20th-century sculptures by Egyptian artist Mahmoud Mokhtar that have been in the same family collection for eight decades will be auctioned this month. The auction will start during an online sale of 20th century art and Middle Eastern art with bidding open from March 23–30.
The two works, titled Ibn El Balad (1910) and Arous El Nil (1929), were purchased from the artist by Egyptian politician and art collector Hafez Afifi Pasha. A former surgeon, Afifi Pasha acted as the Egyptian ambassador to London. He also served as the director of the Bank Misr and was appointed as the royal court chief under King Farouk in 1951. The two works are estimated to fetch a collective price of £210,000 ($292,000).
The first bronze, Arous El Nil (or Bride of the Nile), shows a woman with a Pharaonic headdress and scarab necklace looking to the side. It was made in the 1920s or 1930s and is the bust for the full-length sculpture that is in the collection of Paris’s Jeu de Paume. The work has the art deco stylisation that the artist is now famous for, as well as his dexterity with Egyptian symbolism. Like many intellectuals of the period, Mokhtar returned to motifs, styles and subjects from Egypt’s Pharaonic past to create a new identity for the nation as it broke free of colonialism.
Created when Mokhtar was only 19 years old, Ibn El Balad (1910) is a bronze sculpture of a young boy standing on a brick platform. Rather than the epic grandeur of his later work, this is sympathetic, even quirky; a quizzical expression rests on the boy’s scrunched-up face, and his shoes are turned up in a cartoonish manner. The piece was Mokhtar’s university graduation project at the Egyptian School of Fine Arts in Cairo.
Afifi Pasha was an enormous supporter of Mokhtar, funding the well-known Egypt Awakened (1920) sculpture, of a veiled Egyptian woman standing next to a sphinx, which now looks over Ramses Square in Cairo. In addition to his financial support, Afifi was also a founding member of the Friends of Mahmoud Mokhtar Foundation, established after the artist’s abrupt death in 1934.
Over the course of his career spanning less than two decades, Mokhtar is believed to have made between 80–100 sculptures.