Fahrelnissa Zeid (Jordanian/Turkish 1901-1991)

Fahrelnissa Zeid, the aristocratic Turkish pioneer artist who later married into the Jordanian Hashemite Royal Family, has a singular place in the history of Turkish modern art. As a female artist living in Paris in the 1940s, she was one of the so-called Ecole de Paris artists. Underlying much of her work is the influence of Turkish miniatures or tile mosaics, blended with her experience of Fauvism and abstraction. She painted in various styles, figurative and abstract, but in each her work is characterized by a use of bold colour and broad brushstrokes. The present example has much less to do with Islamic antecedents and,freely painted and without thick outline, it is a striking example of her lyrical abstract work.