Fahr El-Nissa Zeid (Turkey, 1900-1991)


Red Dawn oil on canvas, framed signed "FAHR EL NISSA" (lower right), executed circa 1960's50.5 x 75.5cm (19 7/8 x 29 3/4in).
|AN IMPORTANT ABSTRACT WORK BY FAHR EL-NISSA ZEID FORMERLY IN THE COLLECTION OF RENOWNED POET EDOUARD RODITI Provenance:Originally acquired directly from the artist by her friend Edouard Herbert Roditi (famous poet and translator b. Paris 1910)Gifted to his brother Harold Lawrence Roditi and his wife Doris May Roditi, By descent to the latter's brother, William Spurgeon DexterThence by descent to the present ownerIn an interview with Edouard Roditi in 1960, Zeid describes her experience with the 'D Group': 'We were considered dangerous innovators and revolutionaries because we insisted on showing our work to the masses, not only to the educated elite, as all painters of the past had done...we attached as much importance to the critical remarks of illiterate workers as to opinions expressed by sophisticated intellectuals.'Fahr El-Nissa ZeidFahr El-Nissa Zeid was born in 1901 in Istanbul, Turkey into a distinguished Ottoman family. Her father was Muhammad Sakir Pasha (Kabaagacli) an Ottoman diplomat, brigadier, photographer and historian, who was the brother of Grand Vizier Cevat Pasha, and her mother Sare Ismet Hanim was from Crete. Her immediate family included the writer and artists Cevat Şakir Kabaağaçlı, Fureya Koral and Aliye Berger.Fahr El-Nissa started to sketch and paint at a very young age, attracted by portrait painting and watching her brother Cevat Sakir, who was equally a gifted painter, drawing "the sound of his brush was coming to my ears like a melody. He held my hand and started moving it on the paper. Since that day, neither that sound vanished, nor the passion for painting". In 1919 Fahr El-Nissa's passion for art led her to attend the Imperial School of Art in Istanbul, where she combined studies in charcoal drawing, perspective and working with plaster with Greek art, aestheticism and impressionist technique.Her first marriage at the age of 19 was to the writer and intellectual Izzet Melih Devrim (1887-1966), one of the authors of Servet-I Funun, with whom she had three children: Faruk who died in infancy (1921-23), the painter Nejad Melih Devrim (1923-95) and the actress/director Sirin Devrim (1926-2011).In 1924, still grieving the loss of Faruk, Izzet Melih took Fahr El-Nissa on her first trip to Europe, starting with Venice, whose city and integral art captivated her artistic spirit. Subsequent trips took them to Seville, Granada, Cordoba, Rome and Florence, which gave her the opportunity to study European art, both past and present.In Istanbul, the Devrims were favourite guests of the Turkish President Ataturk and attended events at the Dolmabahce Palace when he was in Istanbul. On 29th August 1928 at the Ceremonial Hall of the Palace, Fahr El-Nissa attended a key historical event in Turkish history, sitting next to Ataturk at the conference on the transition from Arabic to Latin script.Later in 1928, the Devrims went to Paris for Fahr El-Nissa to continue her studies at the Académie Ranson under Roger Bissiere (1888-1964), one of the exponents of the abstract Tachisme style. Encouraged by her tutor Bissiere, Fahr El-Nissa, whose technique was semi-impressionistic, chose abstract painting, and by fusing influences by the Fauves (1905-07) with her painterly style and bold use of pure colour; the Cubists (1910s-1920s) with their stress on geometry and by the bold black lines of stained glass, created a style all her own, yet acknowledging the traditions of the past.Fahr El-Nissa's second marriage, and the one which would come to define the greater part of her life, was to Zeid bin Hussein, the Iraqi Ambassador in Ankara and younger brother of King Faisal I of Iraq. The couple married in Athens in July 1934 and initially lived in Buyukdere, but then Prince Zeid was appointed Iraqi Ambassador to Berlin, where they lived from 1935-37, and where their only child together Prince Ra'ad, was born in 1936.Shortly after Germany annexed Austria, the family returned to Istanbul. That summer Sare Ismet, Fahr El-Nissa's mother, died and they moved to Baghdad, where she wore a veil for the first time since 1919. A life of seclusion and segregation in Baghdad brought on depression and, following the death of King Ghazi (Prince Zeid's nephew), Fahr El-Nissa went to Paris and the family reunited in Istanbul in the summer of 1939. She associated herself with a circle of young Turkish artists known as the 'D Group', founded in 1933, was not representative of any particular artistic idea, but welcomed new trends coming from both Oriental and Western worlds, a trend very much present in Fahr El-Nissa's works.After the war, Prince Zeid was appointed the first Iraqi Ambassador to the Court of St James'. Thus, they moved to London where they would remain for many years, with Fahr El-Nissa converting one of the maids rooms of the embassy into a studio and continued to paint. It was during these years of the second half of the 1940s that her work moved from figurative to more abstract, as seen in 1948's Loch Lomond and Tents, and the 1949's Abstract Parrot. Her breakthrough into the international arena came when she presented her large-scale abstract paintings at the Hugo Gallery in New York in 1950, including the work the man-moon voyage, which attracted good reviews from the art critics and made her name as one of the leading abstract artists of the day.In July 1958, the Iraqi royal family was murdered in a bloody coup, Princes Zeid and Ra'ad survived as they were in Ischia at the time. Life changed dramatically for Princes Zeid and his family, who found themselves having to leave the Iraqi Embassy in London and move to a small house.It was also after this tragedy that Fahr El-Nissa started to paint portraits again, telling her daughter Sirin Devrim that the warmth of a human being whilst working on a portrait was helpful, a genre that would become her main focus from the late 1960s.Prince Zeid died in 1970, leaving Fahr El-Nissa distraught. She continued to hold exhibitions, including the 1072 exhibition Fahr El-Nissa Zeid. Portraits et Peintures Abstraites at Galerie Katia Granoff in Paris, which included a haunting large-scale portrait of her late husband. Her portraits showed a distinct stylistic nod to the past, in particular the facial articulation of Byzantine iconography, her ultimate aim was to show the essence of the spirit of the sitter rather than every physical detail, leading Katia Granoff to call her a "soul-thief"In 1976, she moved to Amman, Jordan, to be close to Prince Ra'ad and his family. There she taught at the Royal Art Institute and established the Fahr El-Nissa Institute of Fine Arts. She passed away in 1991.Fahr El-Nissa took part in approximately fifty exhibitions around the world. During her career, she was decorated with major awards, including a First-Class award of the Iraqi Order of Osmaniyeh. Having lived her life on an international stage, both as a princess and an artist, witnessing a number of major historical events, Fahr El-Nissa displayed an aptitude to change, which is evident in her work, with concrete and abstract standing side by side.