Fahrelnissa Zeid

Private collection, Istanbul; thence by descent

Istanbul, Istanbul Modern, Fahrelnissa and Nejad: Two Generations of the Rainbow, 2006, p. 245, illustrated 
Hagen, Osthaus Museum; Goslar,  Mönchehaus Museum; Pecs, Modern Hungarian Gallery, The Huma Kabakci Collection, 2010, p. 50, illustrated 

Tayfun Belgin, ed., The Huma Kabakci Turkish Art Collection, Istanbul, 2008, p. 199, illustrated 

This work is in very good condition. Extremely close inspection reveals some minor craquelures along the lower edge of the painting, which is inherent to the medium's natural ageing process. Some minor paint loss to the lower left tip and lower center edge. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultraviolet light. The colours in the catalogue illustration are accurate; however, the overall tonality is softer and tends more towards dark black-browns, subtle reds and oranges in the actual work.
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Fahrelnissa Zeid was born into a family of intellectuals; her father was a Pasha who raised a brood of highly creative children. Fahrelnissa's sister Aliye Berger was also an early female printmaker, her cousin Fureya was the first modern female ceramicist and her brother Cevat Sakir Kabaagacli grew to be one of the most famous Turkish authors 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.

Embedded in the Paris art world and 

one of the first female artists to exhibit at the ICA in London in the late 1950s, Zeid was inspired by the melting pot of styles that constituted the École de Paris in the first half of the twentieth century. Artists from across the world congregated here, bringing with them a wealth of fashions, tastes and techniques that constituted a new movement without a specific identity. In this milieu Fahrelnissa Zeid found her spiritual home. Fahrelnissa Zeid, a Turkish artist married to the Iraqi ambassador to London, found her spiritual home.

Zeid has a style that is all her own. Influenced by the Fauves with their painterly style and bold use of pure colour, and by Picasso and the Cubists with their stress on geometry, and the experimental compositions of Piet Mondrian with his bold black lines, Zeid fuses all these influences and injects them with an overwhelming sense of her own personality, and expressionistic flare that gives her paintings life and movement.

Painted in the 1950s, the present work is outstanding example of the artist's work dating from the period when the artist was replacing her geometric calligraphic lines and bright colours with more expressive brushstrokes, in darker pastel tones. The intensity and the expressiveness of the artist's brushstrokes are simultaneously spontaneous and deliberately enhanced with the scraping and scribbling of the paint by a knife or a spatula which brings immense depth to the composition. This practice of painting was inherent to her strong belief in constantly unlearning and renewing oneself. 

Zeid is also comparable to Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, another female artist practising in Paris in the mid-twentieth century and one of the leading lights of the École de Paris, renowned for her experimentation with dense and complex compositions as well as Lee Krasner, renowned for the compositional harmony of her canvases. Female artists embraced modernism as a sign of freedom among many other things in the twentieth century and they were able to establishing themselves in a male dominated arena.                                                               

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'. Her works have also recently taken centre stage at both the Sharjah Biennial and the 14^th Istanbul Biennale this year. The present lot is a beautiful work by Fahrelnissa Zeid who deserves to be recognised in the pantheon of great international artists.