Maghreb II

Ruth Eckstein

Eckstein worked in her father's Nuremburg fabric store as a teenager in the late 1920s and early '30s. This piece is reminiscent of linen or muslin drapery, perhaps owing to her time there, and her use of texure makes the color fields appear almost soft to the touch.

The Maghreb is usually defined as much or most of the region of western North Africa or Northwest Africa, west of Egypt. An area previously known to Europeans as Barbary or Barbary States.

The Muslim areas of Spain in those times were usually included in contemporary definitions of the Maghreb—hence the use of 'Moor' or 'Moors' to describe the Muslim inhabitants of Spain by Christian and other Western sources.