Bushra Fakhoury MRBS, The Basilisk

Bushra Fakhoury MRBS The Basilisk Patinated bronze Signed and numbered 1 of an edition of 5 201cm high On view at: Dreweatts Donnington Priory Lebanon-born British artist Bushra Fakhoury studied Art at the American University in Beirut, and obtained her PhD in Art Education at the University of London in 1983. She is a Member of the Royal British Society of Sculptors and the Chelsea Art Club. Her work is often humorous and surreal, incorporating human and animal figures or, as in the present lot, hybrids of the two. Heavily steeped in the Hellenistic culture of the Levant and the artist's extensive travels, Fakhoury's sculptures engage with folklore and mythological themes. The creature represented in the present lot appears in bestiaries and legends throughout history as a creature both reptile and rooster, and has here been given an added, slightly grotesque, similarity to a human figure. Fakhoury's work appears in private collections across the world, and she has completed several public commissions. Her iconic, gravity-defying sculpture Dunamis for example, representing a male figure holding aloft an elephant with one hand, stands tall on London's Park Lane, while the sculptor's dynamic Danse Gwenedour was unveiled by Marble Arch, also in the Capital, in 2017 A smaller version of the present model was sold at Sotheby's London, 20th Century British Art, 6 November 2007, lot 139