"A Pioneer of Modern Egyptian Art"

Born in Cairo, Egypt in 1924 to the Dean of Cairo University's Science Faculty and the founder of the entomology department and a French-trained dress designer who also served on the women's committee of the Egyptian Red Crescent Society, Inji Alfatoun grew as a person and artist in what she described as a "semi-feudal and bourgeois" family of origin.  With her privilege and the opportunities provided to her by being born into an upper-class Francophone family, Aflatoun was able to begin her career under the guidance of her mentor Kamel El Telmissany, an Egyptian painter, at the age of fifteen.

Aflatoun's work was influenced by her discomfort with class structure, which she was first exposed to in childhood while attending a strict Catholic School.  Once beginning her work with El Telmissany, who's work was primarily a satire of Egyptian cultural norms, Afaltoun began creating art using the theme of a surreal and alternate universe of darkness and disasters and focussing her work around women.  Some of her early pieces are these provided, which show women fleeing from violence and fire, primarily being oppressed through the men surrounding them. 

As Egypt began to release itself from British imperial rule, Aflatoun began working as Egypt's pioneer feminist to embark on legal rights for women.  As the author of two political pamphlets by the ages of twenty-four and twenty-five, Aflatoun was imprisoned in the mid-1950s by the Egyptian government as suspected of communism, which she only used to fuel her third political work titled "Prisoners" (1957).  After her release, she spent the following two decades dedicating herself to the pursuit of fine art.  Following her feminist lifestyle and the things she had learned under the mentorship of a surrealist, Aflatoun continued to create paintings of strong Muslim women and brought the Egyptian working class to life through her art.
I chose to highlight the work of Inji Aflatoun because it is human nature to become attracted to the things which we can identify with personally, and as an Egyptian woman with a passion for women's' rights, I found pleasure in researching her story and her art.  As Aflatoun set out to represent some of the most underrepresented communities within Egypt, using her talents to do so, I, too, hope to serve women in need from Middle Eastern and North African countries.  Additionally, her ability to switch from vibrant colors to mundane browns and greys in separate paintings and her ability to tell stories through not just the image being presented but by her choice of paints and brush strokes are admirable.  Aflatoun was able to take the portrait of the working-class Egyptian woman, which most followers of traditional Egyptian culture turn their noses up at, and create a world in which they were considered beautiful and worthy of praise.

The concept of art is not lost on Inji Aflatoun; she took her world and created so many others in response.  This is why Google chose to celebrate her on what would have been her 95th birthday.