Queen and painter · Egypt
Farida of Egypt
Farida of Egypt (1921–1988), born Safinaz Zulficar, was queen of Egypt as the first wife of King Farouk from 1938 to 1948. She is remembered mostly as a queen, but after her divorce she became a painter, encouraged by her uncle, the painter Mahmoud Saïd. After living abroad in Lebanon and Europe and later in Cairo, she painted landscapes and visionary work and exhibited in several countries, including Egypt.
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Safinaz Zulficar was born in Alexandria in 1921 into a family of the Egyptian elite; her mother's brother was the painter Mahmoud Saïd, one of the founders of modern Egyptian art. In January 1938, aged sixteen, she married King Farouk and took the name Farida. The marriage ended in divorce in 1948, and Mathaf's biography says that after it she began to paint again, encouraged by her uncle.
After the divorce, and after the 1952 revolution ended the monarchy, Farida devoted herself to painting. Accounts of her years abroad differ: one has her leaving Egypt in 1963 for Lebanon, Switzerland and finally Paris, and returning in 1982; she held exhibitions in several countries, and Mathaf records a successful solo exhibition at the Méridien hotel in Cairo in 1980. Her pictures include landscapes and more abstract, visionary work.
Her art was long overshadowed by her royal biography; Mathaf says her recognition as an artist remained limited, both in Egypt and abroad. She died in Cairo on 16 October 1988 (one source says 17 October). A recent exhibition at the Liwan Gallery in Cairo showed her work with that of her granddaughter, Yasmine Perreten.
How to look at a Farida: set the life aside at first. The interest is in how a woman from a painter's family chose to paint after the court, and in the range of her media, from pastel portraits to mixed-media pieces. That reading is this site's own.
Where to see the work
Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha holds her work, including the mixed-media Niqash (about 1950) and a pastel Portrait of Simon Sfen; she is also listed in the collections of the Queen Farida Museum in Maadi, the Alexandria Museum of Fine Arts and the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in Cairo. Ask each what is on view. See her uncle Mahmoud Saïd, our list of Egyptian painters, and our guides to African women artists and North Africa.
