RIYADH: At the Kingdom’s inaugural Cultural Investment Conference, which opened in Riyadh on Sept. 29, auction house Sotheby’s presented a rare and significant acquisition from the Arab world: a piece by the late Safeya Binzagr, a seminal figure in the Saudi modern-art scene.
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“Coffee Shop in Madina Road” was painted in 1968, the same year in which Binzagr held her first exhibition with her peer, and fellow art pioneer, Mounirah Mosly in Jeddah.
“(That exhibition) marked an early, visible moment for women artists in the Kingdom’s modern scene, shaping expectations for subsequent generations,” Alexandra Roy, Sotheby’s head of sale, Modern and Contemporary Middle East, told Arab News.
Binzagr’s influence stretched well beyond her work. Perhaps even more significant is the eponymous cultural center she opened in Jeddah, which, Roy said, “cemented her role in preserving and presenting Saudi cultural narratives to the public.”
