Artist Database

Inji Efflatoun was born in 1924 in Cairo to a family of French-speaking aristocratic landlords. She began taking classes with the Egyptian surrealist Kamel el-Telmissany at the age of 15. He later introduced Efflatoun to the Art et Liberté movement, which was comprised of communist thinkers aligned with anti-imperialist values who utilised Surrealism as a creative strategy. Efflatoun was the first woman to study in the arts department at the University of Cairo, where she published several manifestos and campaigned for gender equality in Egypt and across Europe. Her political involvement led to her four-year imprisonment in 1959 during Gamal Abdel Nasser's presidency.

Efflatoun's artwork was considerably guided by her activism and often depicted scenes that highlighted the beauty and plight of everyday working-class Egyptian life in vivid colours and bold brush strokes. Her surrealist style later went in the direction of social realism, possibly evolving from her interaction with David Alfaro Siqueiros, a Mexican muralist, in the late 1950's.

By the 1950's, Efflatoun was already an internationally established artist, having her works shown in the first Egyptian pavilion in the 1952 Venice Biennale as well as the second São Paulo Biennale in 1953. She was awarded the French Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1955, which is awarded for a considerable contribution to the arts. Her works uphold her memory following her death in 1989 and are part of collections such as the Bajreel Art Foundation in Sharjah, the Dubai Collection and the Museum of Modern Art collection in Cairo.