Fahrelnissa Zeid

Influential Turkish artist Fahrelnissa Zeid (1901–1991) was, throughout her long career, best known for her large-scale abstract paintings. Marrying influences from Islamic, Byzantine, and Eastern art with the bold color of the Fauvists, the geometrical dissonance of the Cubists, and the precise lines of Mondrian, Zeid developed an abstract vocabulary that was a synthesis of East and West and uniquely her own.

Zeid’s career began in the 1920s in Paris and took her back to her native Istanb...