Fahrelnissa Zeid

Private Collection, Brussels

Colour: The colours in the catalogue are fairly accurate. Condition: This work is in very good condition. There are minor drying craquelure on top centre.
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Fahrelnissa Zeid was born into a family of intellectuals; her father was a Pasha with a passion for history and photography, who raised a brood of highly creative children. Fahrelnissa's sister Aliye Berger was also a practicing artist and her brother Cevat Sakir Kabaagacli grew to be one of the most famous Turkish authors of the twentieth century writing under the pseudonym The Fisherman of Halicarnassus. From her first marriage to the author Izzet Melih Devrim, Fahrelnissa had two children of her own: Nejad Melih Devrim, the internationally renowned artist of the Paris School, and Sirin Devrim, the actress and writer. In 1934, Fahrelnissa married Prince Emir Zeid of Iraq.


One of the first female artists to exhibit at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in London in the late 1950s, Princess Fahrelnissa Zeid is one of the most internationally acclaimed Turkish artists. Traveling around the world, from Europe to the Middle East and America, yet deeply connected to her roots; she masterfully synthesized an Oriental style derived from Islamic art, with an Occidental abstract expressionism. Zeid renders her paintings with a mystical, Sufi harmony; an intrinsic spiritual balance for which she is renowned. An iconic artist, Fahrelnissa Zeid exhibited alongside major artists of the period like Hans Hartung, Francis Picabia and Sergei Poliakoff.

Zeid's education in Greek art and mythology is evident from the title and the composition of this painting depicting the Minotaur. A creature from Greek legend with the body of a man and the head and tail of a bull, Minotaur was the son of a mortal queen, Pasiphea, and the Cretan Bull which was given to Pasiphea's husband King Minos of Crete to support his right to rule. The coupling of these two tragic characters condemned the Minotaur to incarceration in a labyrinth, sentencing the Bull to an agonizing existence in the dark, his one purpose the destruction of human life. Going through a personal tragedy in her own life in 1958, with the massacre of her family after a coup d'état in Iraq, it is possible to suggest that the artist felt compelled to paint these tragic compositions symbolic of her own despair.

This painting is an outstanding example of the artist's work dating to the late 1950s and early 1960s; when for a short period of time the artist replaced her geometric calligraphic lines and bright colours with more expressive brushstrokes, and abstract figures, in darker pastel tones. The strong black outlines, so quintessentially Fahrelnissa, delineates the central figure composed of soft dark hues in greenish yellow, pink and white. The intensity and the expressiveness of the artist's brushstrokes are simultaneously spontaneous and deliberate. The scraping and scribbling of the paint by a knife or a spatula reinforces the form of the mythological creature, while the pastel tones indicate the mortal and humane side of an otherwise fierce animal.

The Minotaur is portrayed with a small ball next to him, possibly a reference to a star, as this mythological creature was also known as Asterion, or star. After exhibiting at the Salon d'Automne few years before her death, Fahrelnissa Zeid was honored with a medal by King Hussein, and lauded as 'The Jordanian Star'.