Tahia Halim

Abstract

Tahia Halim (b. 1919) is a foundational figure in Egypt’s post-independence expressionist movement, celebrated for her paintings of Nubia. Initially trained in Cairo and later at Paris's Académie Julian, her early work captured pivotal moments in Egyptian history with a nationalist focus. Halim developed a signature “naïve” figurative style, often described as “folkloric impressionism,” structured by intricate arabesque lines.

She gained international acclaim, representing Egypt at the Venice and São Paulo Biennials. In 1962, she participated in a government-organized trip to document Nubian culture before the Aswan High Dam submerged its lands. The resulting works are her most enduring legacy, celebrated for their stylised figures set against vibrant, near-abstract backdrops.

Biography

Tahia Halim is celebrated as the founder of Egypt’s post-independence and Cold War era expressionist movement and for her paintings of Nubia from the 1960s and 70s. Her practice has also been dubbed “folkloric impressionism” and “mythical realism.” Born in 1919 in the province of Dunqulā, then part of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, she was the fourth child of a high-ranking member of the Egyptian army and a member of the extended Egyptian ruling family. Halim’s family relocated to Cairo when the artist was five years old. She received academic training beginning in the late-1930s with the artist Youssef (Joseph) Traboulsi from Greater Syria (1938–1940) and Greek artist Alec Jerom (dates unknown). In 1941, she began studying in the studio of Egyptian artist Hamed Abdallah (1917–1985), where she eventually taught. The two married in 1945 and left for Paris in 1949, where Halim studied at the Académie Julian from 1949 to 1951 before returning to Cairo. They divorced in 1957.

In the 1940s and early 50s, Halim was known for her paintings of crowds, depicting everyday public scenes, as well as watershed moments in Egyptian political and social history, such as the Cairo Fire of 27 January 1952, and the British departure from Egypt following their defeat in the Tripartite Aggression of 1956. Like other members of the cohort of artists that became prominent around Egyptian independence, her work moved away from the internationalist stance that marked many artists of the previous generation and focused instead on a nationalist framework.

In the 1950s, Halim worked in a consistently “naïve” figurative idiom, which often eschewed illusionistic perspective for a lattice of intersecting curved lines or arabesques that structure and animate her paintings’ surfaces. In the same period, Halim began representing the Republic of Egypt. Later, the Arab Republic of Egypt at high-profile exhibitions and biennials around the world, participating, for example, in national pavilions at the Second São Paulo Biennial in 1953 and the Venice Biennale in 1956, 1960 and 1970, receiving first prize amongst the Egyptian submissions to the Guggenheim International Award Exhibition in 1958. In 1962, she travelled with a group of twenty-five artists, writers, and architects on a trip organised by the Egyptian Ministry of Culture and National Guidance to record Nubian culture and built environment before the disappearance of ancestral lands under the waters of Lake Nasser due to the construction of the High Dam in the 1960s.

The trip represented a celebrated example of statist policies towards the arts by the regime of President Gamal Abdel Nasser, which mobilised artists en masse in the service of the new republic.1 Today, Halim is best remembered for her paintings of people and everyday life in Nubia, compositions animated by arabesques, which set her stylised figures against backdrops that often border on complete abstraction.

Bibliography

Awad, Louis. Tahia Halim. Cairo: General Information Association, 1985.

Al -Sharouni, Sobhi. T. Halim, Mythical Realism. Cairo, Dar Al Shorouk: 1999. [Arabic and English, translation by Ramadan ‘Abdel Qadir]

al-Sirfi, Amin. Al-Fannana, Tahia Halim (1919-2003): Thakirat al-Fann. Cairo: The Egyptian Public Institute of Books, 2015.

Further Readings

Azar, Aimé. La peinture moderne en Égypte. Cairo: Les Éditions Nouvelles, 1961.

Abaza, Mona, and Sherwet Shafei. Twentieth-Century Egyptian Art: the Private Collection of Sherwet Shafei. Cairo, Egypt: American University in Cairo Press, 2011.

Al-Dib, Ali Kamel. “Rihlat al-Fannanin illa-l-Nuba wa-Athariha fi A‘amallihim,” al-Malja (October 1, 1962): pp. 46-51. [Arabic]

Karnouk, Liliane. Modern Egyptian Art, 1920-2003. Cairo, New York, Egypt, USA: The American University in Cairo Press, 2005.

Ramzy, Majdi. “Anshudat al-Salam wa-l-Tilqa’iyya: al-Fannana Tahia Halim,” Fikr wa-Fann (October 10, 1995): pp. 55-57. [Arabic]

Al-Razzaz, Mostafa. Inji, Tahia, Gazbia: A Life's Journey. Picasso Art Gallery, 2014.

Rese, Gottlieb. Tahia Halim, Malerei Arabische Republik Ägypten. Berlin, Ministry of Culture of the DDR: 1971.

Zuhairi, Kamel. “Misr bi-‘Unwan Nisa’iyya: Ghina’iyyat Tahia Halim,” Al-Hilal (September 1, 1988): pp. 94-109. [Arabic]