Colour and words: Sanaa El-Bissy's retrospective - Visual Art - Arts & Culture

Al-Ahram Weekly

11-05-2025

The work of renowned artist and journalist Sanaa El-Bissy, showcased at Picasso East Gallery last week, reveals a deep connection between writing and drawing as her elegant style blends passions.
Her retrospective, which closed last week, highlighted this unique fusion.
As a writer, journalist, and painter, Sanaa El-Bissy belongs to the generation that experienced the golden age of both fields.
The retrospective at Picasso East Gallery celebrated El-Bissy's life and work, highlighting the intersection of her writing and visual art.
El-Bissy's writing and painting are inseparable. Each one complements the other in a mutually innovative and emotional interaction.
Her more than 80 oil paintings, created between 1960 and 2025, reflect a career built on the duality of journalism and visual arts. Her paintings, often bursting with vibrant colours, tell stories through figures in constant motion, expressing both joy and anxiety.
Her preferred style, a mix of figurative expressionism often leaning toward abstraction, was first seen in her 1972 solo exhibition.
Society, women, and human emotion
El-Bissy's works are rich with emotional depth, often drawing on themes of community, human interaction, and the complexities of life. Using characteristic bold, vivid colours, she paints crowds, horses, flowers, and people, all interwoven into a lively, almost chaotic symphony of hues. These elements, often blending ornamental and abstract motifs, symbolise her approach to painting and journalism: an intimate, personal interpretation of the world.
El-Bissy's art has always been deeply engaged with societal issues, particularly those affecting women. The commitment to gender equality and women's rights is reflected in her journalistic work and her paintings, which often depict women in moments of introspection, sadness, and strength.
Her work in the 1950s and 1960s, as editor of Al-Ahram's women's section and later the creator of the magazine Nisf Al-Donia, showcases her dedication to advocating for women's voices and struggles.
El-Bissy's art, though full of vibrancy, often conveys a deeper, sometimes melancholic tone.
Though she uses vivid colours in painting women's faces, these faces often evoke a sense of mystery and sadness.
Throughout her career, El-Bissy highlighted the emotional and social challenges women face. Her paintings highlight women's beauty and strength, capturing their elegance, confusion, and inner lives.
The human form and Arabian horses
The human form—whether through portraits or dancing crowds—remains central to her work. In both her paintings and journalism, El-Bissy explores the human experience, seeking to convey feelings that are both abstract and deeply rooted in daily life. Her art oscillates between realism and symbolism, utilising colour and line to communicate intense emotions.
One of the most significant aspects of El-Bissy's art is her focus on the human body, which she portrays as personal and political.
The figures in her work invite viewers to reflect on their relationships with the world, their identity, and the broader societal context. The use of the human figure challenges the viewer to contemplate the aesthetic form and its deeper connections to life, humanity, and personal expression.
The Arabian horse, frequently featured in El-Bissy's work, symbolises freedom, strength, and grace. It dominates many of her pieces, representing a "knight" figure fighting societal wrongs and exploring the tension between the dream world and reality.
El-Bissy's connection to the horse dates back to her childhood. Her paintings depict it in fluid, dynamic motion, emphasising its symbolic significance as a representation of human desire for liberation and expression.
El-Bissy's husband, the late artist and journalist Mounir Kanaan, also greatly influenced her work. His encouragement helped her develop her artistic identity, even as she absorbed his creative philosophy.
Kanaan's belief in blending genres and styles is something El-Bissy took to heart. In her own paintings, she merged abstraction, realism, and surrealism.
A key feature of El-Bissy's retrospective is her work titled Al-Awda (The Return, 2025), which poignantly depicts the hoped-for return of displaced Palestinians to Gaza. The painting uses vivid, warm colours and miniature figures to create a sense of movement and collective desire.
Alongside it, another significant work, Al-Tawwaf (The Circumambulation), represents the pilgrimage to Mecca. This painting captures the pilgrims' spiritual and physical journey in a rhythmic, circular motion, symbolising peace, humility, and devotion.
In addition to her visual art, El-Bissy's legacy extends to her written work. She recently published Beit Al-Fan (The House of Art), an art encyclopedia that her son Hisham Kanaan helped create.
The 500-page book delves into the lives of prominent figures in Egyptian visual arts and explores various schools and trends in art history. It also covers subjects such as Islamic art, the Arabian horse, and oriental carpets, showcasing the depth of El-Bissy's cultural and artistic knowledge.
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This article's long version was originally published in Al-Ahram Hebdo (French) on 11 May. Additional edit and translation: Ahram Online
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