The Collector's Eye XIII

Ubuntu Art Gallery opens its autumn season with The Collector's Eye XIII, the thirteenth edition of its annual exhibition of modern and contemporary Egyptian art drawn from the secondary market. The show runs from 16 September to 17 October 2026 at the gallery's Zamalek space, with an opening held on the evening of 15 September.

The series has become a fixture of the gallery's calendar each September. It brings together works that have passed through private hands, giving collectors a rare chance to see and acquire pieces by artists who shaped Egyptian painting across the twentieth century. Last year's edition, The Collector's Eye XII, gathered more than fifty works by names including Samir Rafi, George Bahgoury, Hamed Abdallah, Salah Taher and Hosni El Banani.

Works published so far for this edition include a painting by Hussein Bicar, the Alexandria-born painter and illustrator whose clear, Pharaonic-inflected line made him one of the best loved figures in modern Egyptian art. Alongside it are two canvases by Britt Boutros Ghali, the Norwegian-born painter who has worked in Cairo for decades, and works by Samir Ahmed Ali and Ihab Shaker, the caricaturist, animator and painter whose poetic figures draw on Egyptian folk tales and music.

The pairing is characteristic of Ubuntu, which built its programme on showing contemporary Egyptian art alongside secondary-market modern works, and on a belief in the interconnectedness of Egyptian history, society and identity. The gallery has taken this approach to Art Dubai Modern, where it has shown pioneers from the 1950s onward.

For visitors, the exhibition offers a compact survey of how Egyptian artists have moved between figuration, illustration and abstraction, and a view of the works that are circulating among Cairo collectors today. The gallery's online listing is likely to grow as further works are added during the run.