Nazli Madkour’s paintings fall between abstraction and figuration in a modernist approach.
Largely inspired by nature and imbued with gender and cultural baggage, her works focus more on elaborating a personal aesthetic language and revealing an inner world of sensibility than scanning a particular subject.
Her art investigates the mediums’ propensities for generating new meanings as well as disclosing underlying layers and structures. She achieves this through subtle and complex manipulation of texture, line, and color. Her sources are predominantly local, and her aesthetic language is universal.
Madkour is the author of the book “Women and Art in Egypt” (in Arabic, 1989 – in English, 1993) and has illustrated a deluxe edition of Egyptian Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz book “Arabian Days and Nights” published by the “Limited Editions Club” in New York in 2005. The book and the originals were first exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C., before touring several countries.
About the Artist
Nazli Madkour was born in Cairo, where she lives and works.
She received her master’s degree in political economy from the American University in Cairo. In 1981, she resigned from her post as an economic expert at the Industrial Development Center for Arab States (Arab League, Cairo) to concentrate on art.
She held over 40 solo exhibitions. She also took part in several group exhibitions in Egypt, Portugal, Germany, Italy, France, Lebanon, Sharjah, Kuwait, Greece, Japan, the UK, and the USA. Madkour participated in the Sharjah International Biennales and the Cairo International Biennale of 1998. She took part in the second international symposium of Sanart, Ankara, Turkey, in May 1995.
