Showing at Picasso gallery, Nazli Madkour's paintings fall between abstraction and figuration in a modernist approach. Largely inspired by nature and imbued with both gender and cultural influences her works focus on elaborating a personal aesthetic language and on revealing an inner world of sensibility rather than scanning a particular subject. Her art explores the mediums' propensities for generating new meanings as well as disclosing underlying layers and structures. She achieves this through a subtle and complex manipulation of texture, line and colour. Her sources are predominantly local, however, her aesthetic language is universal. Madkour received her Master's Degree in Political Economy from the American University in Cairo. In 1981, she resigned her post of Economic Expert at the Industrial Development Centre for Arab States (Arab League, Cairo) to concentrate on art. She is the author of the book, Egyptian Women and Artistic Creativity published in Arabic in 1989 by the Association of Arab Women Solidarity, and published in English under the title, Women and Art in Egypt by the State Information Department in 1993. She has also illustrated a deluxe edition of Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz's 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 DC before touring several countries. including the Arab Women Artists exhibition, “Forces of Change” held in the USA 1993-1995, the exhibition of Egyptian Women Artists held in Beijing (China) in September 1995, in March 1996 at "Art 54" Gallery in Soho, New York (USA), in August 1997 the UNESCO Exhibition of Creative Women Artists of the Mediterranean and the Black Seas, Thessaloniki, Greece. The exhibition is on until 13 April.
