Fahrelnissa Zeid

Colourful exhibition at Tate Modern of work by Turkish artist Fahrelnissa Zeid.

This was a case where I found the artists life more interesting than her art. Born to an elite Ottoman family in Istanbul she married the Iraqi Ambassador to Berlin, who was part of the Iraqi royal family, and witnessed the rise of Nazi Germany. Following the Second World War she was involved in the art scene in London and Paris until a coup d’etat in Iraq in 1958 when her husband went into exile. It was only at this point that she cooked for the first time. In amongst all this her older brother was convicted of killing their father!

The art was manly large abstracts although often based in reality. I liked a abstract parrot broken into shapes and colour but still recognisable, also an abstract landscape of Loch Lomond. One room had large pictures of small, bright shapes edged in back looking like bog mosaics. In later life, as she began cooking, she started making sculptures out of painted animal bones.

Closed on 8 October 2017

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