Raised in a Western intellectual and political environment between Egypt, France and England, Nimr studied at the Slade School of Fine Arts in London and attended the atelier of the post-impressionist Walter Sickert. Her first paintings are populated by long silhouettes, bathers, fishermen, and religious characters. In the ‘30s she came into contact with Surrealism, first in London, then in Paris with Henry Miller, finally in Cairo, where she joined Art et Liberté, a movement of artists convinced that Surrealism could face the rise of nationalism. After the tragic loss of her only son, Nimr paints the darkest paintings of her surrealist period, works embodied by a distressing sensuality, marked by an oppressive and threatening pessimism.
