The Children and the War

Gazbia Sirry was known for depicting modern times in Egypt during the Nasserist period, especially the daily life of working-class people. In the 1960s, the painter showed in her oeuvre a move towards abstract expressionism, which especially resulted from the regional political turmoil.

The defeat suffered by the Arab coalition (Egypt, Syria, Jordan) after the Six-Day War in 1967, spread a collective sense of grief amongst the populations of the Arab World, who had hoped to see a liberated Palestine. In The Children and the War, the Egyptian painter depicted the atrocities of the conflict, which affected innocent people, including kids. In a limited palette of colours, Sirry depicted children’s bodies falling and alluding to the fall of the Pan-Arab ideology and its aspiration of extension, after the military defeat.