Born in Cairo in 1923, Salah Yousri graduated from the Fine Arts School of Cairo in 1947, then moved to Paris where he studied in the atelier of renowned cubist artist André Lhote. His influence was pivotal in the development of Yousri’s style. Borrowing Lhote’s colours and designs, Yousri readapted his cubist mannerism to produce a new Egyptian folkloric aesthetic (see previous lot).

The present work, Cité Industrielle, while paying tribute to Yousri’s mentor André Lhote, and his cubist style, marks a distinctive approach to painting infused with elements of Egyptian orientalism. Lhote’s affiliation to the French Cubist movement lies in his attempt to merge emotive and spiritual components into the language of visual arts, and he articulated influential Cubist theories in two treaties, Essay on Landscape (Traité du Paysage) and Essay on Figure Painting (Traité de la Figure) (R.H. Wilenski, Modern French Painters, Harcourt, Brace, 1949). In Cité industrielle, Yousri excel in his ‘transitions’, that is, the reproduction into applied art of the visual phenomena that allow to capture certain shapes (Leighton Fine Art, 2022). In the present painting, Yousri’s urban landscape is merely suggested by the association of geometrical shapes and colours, creating a flagrant impression of shades and perspective.