She’s all over her internet! Even Google Doodle is celebrating her birthday. Who is she? Princess Fahrelnissa Zeid. Ring a bell? Zeid was a Turkish artist well known for her large-scale abstract paintings. January 7, 2019 marked her 118th birthday, a celebration of both her life and work.
Who was Fahrelnissa Zeid ?Born into an aristocratic Ottoman family in 1901, Zeid broke several barriers throughout her career. She combined the art of the Middle East with European abstract art. She was a revolutionary artist for her period, who blended Islamic, Arab Byzantine and Persian influences with European abstract art. She had her own style, the creation of huge paintings with her 6ft-high Towards A Sky as example.
Known for her kaleidoscopic patterns, Zeid major works are:
Fight Against Abstraction, 1947
Resolved Problems, 194
8My Hell, 1951
Towards a Sky, 1953
Someone From the Past, 1980
How about a peek in her personal life? Zeid started painting at a young age. Her earlies known surviving work is a portrait of her grandmother. She painted it when she was 14. At the age of 18, she enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts for Women and married a year after that. Who was the lucky one? The novelist İzzet Melih Devrim. They had 3 children together.
However, in 1934 Zeid divorced Devrim. She went on to marry Prince Zeid bin Hussain of Iraq. In 1935, he was appointed the first Ambassador of the Kingdom of Iraq to Germany. 1938, Zeid and his family were recalled to Iraq, taking up residence in Baghdad. The Princess became depressed and returned to Paris after a short time upon a Viennese doctor.
She spent the next years of her life traveling between Paris, Budapest and Istanbul. Immersing herself in painting and recovery. Zeid had a short-lived association with the D Group of Istanbul, where she exhibited her work with the D Group from 1944. This gave her confidence to begin exhibiting by herself. This led her to open her first personal exhibition in her home in Istanbul in 1944.
Her first retrospective in the western world was at Museum Ludwig in 1990. A number of her paintings were sold at auction in October 2012. The artist works set a world record, totalling £2,021,838.
The latest exhibition of her paintings was held by Tate Modern in 2017. When is the next one? There’s no new yet... Until then, you can enjoy another famous painter’s artworks. How? By playing Da Vinci Diamonds series slots at Kitty Bingo. One of the top ones being Da Vinci Diamonds Dual Play Slot. Find the many famous portraits of Da Vinci like Mona Lisa, Madonna, the Lady with an Ermine, La Belle Ferronière and the Angel from the Virgin of the Rocks.
