Early life (c. 1910) Fahrünissa Şakir was born in 1901 into the
Ottoman Şakir Pasha family on the island of
Büyükada in Istanbul. Her uncle
Ahmed Javad Pasha served as the
Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire from 1891 to 1895 and another uncle,
Cevat Çobanlı, was a
World War I hero. Fahrünissa's father,
Şakir Pasha, was appointed ambassador to Greece, where he met her mother, Sara İsmet Hanım. In 1913, her father was fatally shot and her brother,
Cevat Şakir Kabaağaçlı, was tried and convicted of his murder. Şakir began drawing and painting at a young age. Her earliest known surviving work is a portrait of her grandmother, painted when she was 14. In 1919, she enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts for Women in Istanbul. In 1920 at the age of nineteen, Şakir married the novelist İzzet Melih Devrim. For their honeymoon, Devrim took Şakir to Venice where she was exposed to
European painting traditions for the first time. They had three children together. Her eldest son, Faruk (born 1921), died of
scarlet fever in 1924. Her son Nejad Devrim (born 1923) went on to become a painter, and her daughter
Şirin Devrim (born 1926) became an actress. Şakir travelled to Paris in 1928 and enrolled at the
Académie Ranson, where she studied under the painter
Roger Bissière. Upon her return to Istanbul in 1929, she abandoned her academic figurative practice and turned towards expressionist figurativism, and enrolled at the Istanbul Academy of Fine Arts. Şakir's brother Cevat, better known as the Fisherman of Halicarnassus, was a novelist. Under her tutelage, her sister
Aliye Berger became a major modernist painter and engraver, while her niece
Fureya Koral became a pioneering ceramic artist. , Berlin (1937) , daughter Shirin, and son Raad, Baghdad (1938)
1930–1944 Şakir divorced Devrim in 1934, and married
Prince Zeid bin Hussein of Iraq, who was appointed the first Ambassador of the
Kingdom of Iraq to Germany in 1935. The couple moved to Berlin where Fahrelnissa hosted many social events in her role as an ambassador's wife. After the annexation of Austria in March 1938, Prince Zeid and his family were recalled to Iraq, taking up residence in
Baghdad. Fahrelnissa Zeid became depressed in Baghdad and on the advice of Viennese doctor
Hans Hoff returned to Paris after a short time. She spent the next years of her life traveling between Paris, Budapest, and Istanbul, attempting to immerse herself in painting and recover. By 1941, she was back in Istanbul and focusing on her painting. Zeid became involved with the
D Group of Istanbul, an
avant-garde group of painters working in the newly formed
Turkish Republic. Although her association with the group was short-lived, working with the D Group from 1944 gave Zeid the confidence to begin exhibiting on her own. In 1946, after two more solo exhibitions in
İzmir in 1945 and in Istanbul in 1946, Zeid relocated to London where Prince Zeid Al-Hussein became the first Ambassador of the Kingdom of Iraq to the
Court of St James's. Zeid continued to paint, turning a room in the Iraqi Embassy into her studio. From 1947, Zeid's practice became more complex and her work transitioned from
figurative painting to abstraction. She was influenced by the abstract styles coming out of Paris in the post-war period.
Queen Elizabeth visited Zeid's exhibition at
Saint George's Gallery in London in 1948. Art critic
Maurice Collis reviewed that exhibition, and he and Zeid became friends. The prominent French art critic and curator
Charles Estienne became a major supporter of Zeid's work. She was part of the founding exhibition of the Nouvelle Ecole de Paris organised by Estienne in 1952 at the Galerie Babylone. Over the next decade, living between London and Paris, Zeid created some of her strongest works, experimenting with monumental abstract canvases that immerse the viewer in kaleidoscopic universes through their heavy use of line and vibrant colour. Zeid exhibited at Galerie Dina Vierny in 1953, showing her most recent abstract works such as
The Octopus of Triton, and
Sargasso Sea. The exhibition travelled to the
Institute of Contemporary Arts in London in 1954, making her the first woman of any nationality to exhibit at the modernist showcase. At the height of her career, she became friends with a group of international artists such as
Jean-Michel Atlan,
Jean Dubuffet and
Serge Poliakoff, who experimented with gestural abstraction. Fahrelnissa Zeid also exhibited frequently alongside other members of the Nouvelle Ecole de Paris in small group exhibitions, as well as exhibiting at the Salon des Realites Nouvelles
Salon des Réalités Nouvelles.
1958–1991 In 1958, Zeid persuaded her husband not to return to Baghdad as acting
regent as he usually did while his great-nephew
King Faisal II took a vacation. The couple went to their new holiday home on the island of
Ischia in the
Gulf of Naples. On 14 July 1958 there was
a military coup in Iraq and the entire royal family was assassinated. Prince Zeid and his family narrowly escaped death, and they were given only 24 hours to vacate the Iraqi Embassy in London. The coup halted Zeid's career as a painter and hostess in London. Zeid and her family moved into an apartment in Paris and at the age of fifty-seven, she cooked her first meal. == Retrospectives and legacy ==