This timeless yet contemporary work brings together the decorative elements of Iranian traditional craft with Western abstraction – in playful yet poignant homage to Islamic geometry and the ancient roots of Iranian culture. In this piece she presents the Farvahar, a winged disc with a man's upper body that is one of the best-known symbols of Zoroastrianism and more generally of the Iranian nation. The wings are spread apart signifying the ascent of the soul or upward progress of human, with good thoughts, words and deeds.

It was Farmanfarmaian’s 1966 visit to the Shah Cheragh Shrine in Iran that truly redefined her artistic trajectory. Adorned with mirror mosaics, the architecture, the light and the people were said to have felt like a mystical performance to the artist. She was also immersed in New York’s avant-garde scene, mixing with the likes of Frank Stella, Mark Rothko and Andy Warhol.

Her works have long been met with international acclaim, from being awarded the Gold medal at the Venice Biennale in 1958 to her installations for the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and most recently her recent retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum, New York in 2015.

20th CENTURY ART/ MIDDLE EAST, 20 April
The 20th Century Art / Middle East sale marks the relaunch of Sotheby’s vibrant and exciting international platform for modern and contemporary arts from North Africa, Turkey, the Middle East and Iran in London.

Mahmoud Mokhtar, On the Banks of the Nile, 1921 (est. £120,000-180,000)

Mahmoud Mokhtar depictions of the struggle for political independence and the emancipation of women in Egypt in the first decades of the 20th-century are unparalleled. This work, characterised by the elegance and determined posture of the present water carrier echoing the aesthetic of the great sculptures of Ancient Egypt and the fashionable Parisian Art Deco, is typical of his oeuvre.

Au Bord du Nil represents the peasant woman who was adopted as the emblem of Egypt’s revolutionary movement. She stands tall, poised to adjust her veil, revealing her feminine beauty whilst carrying out the menial but essential task of sourcing water from the river. Her frontal pose and the stylised visage and folds of the drapery are reminiscent of statues of Egyptian queens. As such the figure at once symbolises ancient and modern Egypt and the reinstatement of the woman at the centre.

Mokhtar moved to Cairo from the countryside in 1902 and was amongst the first to enroll in the city’s new School of Fine Arts six years later. He famously said, ‘When I was a child, there had been no sculpture and no sculptor in my country for more than seventeen hundred years’, becoming the first Egyptian sculptor to follow the pharaonic tradition of sculpting. His sculptures now form part of Cairo’s architecture, a life-size marble version of this work stands at the entrance of the Mokhtar Museum and an example was initially showcased at Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1930.

The present work is the largest of its kind to appear at auction, an iconic testament to the father of modern Egyptian sculpture.

Paul Guiragossian, Karantina Camp (Bourj Hammoud), circa 1964 (est. £30,000- 40,000)

One of the most versatile and avant-garde Lebanese painters of his generation, Guiragossian was born to Armenian parents, survivors of the Armenian Genocide and experienced the consequences of exile from a very tender age. Karantina Camp is an emotive landscape scene of a migrant camp on the outskirts of Beirut, where Armenians in exile were originally placed and began to rebuild a new home – a rare work with a deeply personal resonance to the artist but universal motifs.

As part of a series done in response to the plight of Armenian migrants in the 1960s, the work expresses the heaviness of exile, yet coloured with hope. The painting is a beautifully poignant record of old Beirut and the subsequent birth of a constructed hometown – and one which has special meaning after the Karantina Camp massacre of 1976.

Adel Abidin, I’m Sorry, 2008 (est. £20,000-30,000) “This work sums up my first visit to the USA. During that visit I met many people from different social backgrounds and their reaction, once they knew where I was from, was always the same: “I’m Sorry.” The words... surrounded with light bulbs in the colours of the American flag, which flicker and glimmer, representing the various backgrounds of all those I spoke to who shared the same sentiment.”

This poignant neon lightbox comes from a private collection in Dubai, and has previously been exhibited at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo and as part of the Iran Pavillion at the Venice Biennale last year.

THE ORIENTALIST SALE, 19 April
The Orientalist Sale showcases important Orientalist paintings of Turkey, North Africa, the Levant, and the Middle East. Travelling from America and Europe to the lands known collectively in the 18th and 19th centuries as the Orient, artists aimed to capture sites, cultures and the bright desert light that few had experienced before. These paintings are coveted as fascinating glimpses into the history of these countries from a time before the widespread use of photography and figurative art was little practised by local artists.

Ludwig Deutsch, Morning Prayers, 1902 (est. £500,000-800,000)