Fahrelnissa Zeid. The painter who dearly loved swimming in the Bosphorus, Mediterranean, the ocean; who was a citizen of three countries but did not feel entirely belonging to any; who lived and had studios in several cities, mentored several students; who read Spinoza, Kandinsky, Jung, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche. The painter of inner worlds who left us those striking paintings, a spiritual thinker whose writing is as powerful as her works. Her output has stood the test of time, as no work from a given decade can be easily dated or attributed to that period’s art trends.
With this revisionist biography, an analytical and historical account of Zeid’s work that traces her paintings, sculptures, experiments, styles, diaries, and letters, we get to know her both as an artist and a human being. This is a book where we can find a comprehensive comparative analysis on Fahrelnissa’s art and its relation to painting of twentieth century Turkey, the Middle East, and Europe, a book also to be read as a gripping novel retelling her turbulent life full of ups and downs, exaltations, breakdowns, travels, quests. A narrative of both her extraordinary life and the constant innovation and reinvention that characterised her art, which aimed to go beyond all reductionist stereotypes as well as orientalist readings trapping her in certain patterns, interpretations; a text with a beautiful balance between analytical commentary and biographical narration. In doing so, this book redefines Fahrelnissa for the contemporary reader as one of the most important modernist artists of the twentieth century.
