Artist: Fahrelnissa Zeid

Dirimart London presents Immersion, the first UK gallery exhibition this century dedicated to the pioneering Turkish-Arab modernist Fahrelnissa Zeid (1901–1991). Curated by Adila Laïdi-Hanieh, author of the revisionist biography Fahrelnissa Zeid: Painter of Inner Worlds, the exhibition focuses on the most innovative decades of Zeid’s practice, from the 1940s to 1960s, bringing together works produced in Istanbul, London, Paris, and Ischia.

Following her 2017 institutional retrospective at Tate Modern, Immersion marks a significant UK gallery homecoming, with several works on public view for the first time. Spanning figuration and abstraction, the exhibition highlights Fahrelnissa Zeid’s dynamic, expressionist language across monumental compositions and intimate works on paper. The title reflects her fascination with enveloping visual worlds – from vortex-like forms and maritime imagery to astral landscapes – and her bold, sensory exploration of colour and texture.

Emerging in the 1940s, Fahrelnissa Zeid developed a distinctive expressionist language that evolved into bold abstraction before returning to figuration in the 1960s. A member of the modernist d Grubu (d Group) in Türkiye and later associated with the Nouvelle École de Paris, she occupied a rare position across multiple artistic centres prior to the contemporary globalised era. In 1954, she became the first woman to hold a solo exhibition at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts, marking a key moment in the city’s post-war cultural history.

The exhibition is anchored by a selection of major gestural abstractions, presented alongside earlier figurative works from the 1940s and a notable portrait from the 1960s. Highlights include Aquatic Depths (Sea Cave) (1962), which beckons from the street-facing window with a lush palette of blues and greens. Through modulated colour and palette-knife marks, the composition evokes a dual perspective, both above and within the sea, where fantastical maritime forms emerge in unexpected shapes and hues.

Ischia Terra Incognita (1961) transforms an evening sky into a red and yellow maelstrom, echoing Fahrelnissa Zeid’s kaleidoscopic evocations of the sublime. Together, these two paintings offer rare insight into her little-known Ischia period in the 1960s. Following her and her family’s exile after the 1958 Iraq revolution, Ischia became a place of refuge, where her palette shifted from darker, foreboding tones to luminous compositions inspired by sea and sky.

The artist’s 1950s primitivist phase is represented by Alice in Wonderland (1955) and Depth (ca. 1953). Here, darker palettes, jagged markings, and symbolic forms signal a shift away from her earlier kaleidoscopic abstractions. In Alice in Wonderland, the familiar narrative is reimagined as a turbulent descent into a vortex of colour and motion.

Works from the 1940s further trace the extent of Fahrelnissa Zeid’s artistic development. Adam and Eve and the Broken World, exhibited only twice before – first in 1948 at Gimpel Gallery, London and later in New York in 1950 – reflects her early experimentation with abstraction via kaleidoscopic painting. In dialogue are a series of figurative works, also produced in the 1940s, originally exhibited in landmark shows in Istanbul and Izmir in 1945 and 1946. These works contributed to her becoming the only female member of d Grubu and to her selection for international touring exhibitions in France and the UK. Three of these works are shown in the UK for the first time.

Works on paper – including lithographs, gouaches, sketches, and rare pochoirs – further reveal Fahrelnissa Zeid’s enduring fascination with rhythm, the cosmos, and all-over colour compositions, with many also exhibited publicly for the first time.

Reflecting on her practice in 1950, Fahrelnissa Zeid wrote: ‘I am a means to an end. I transpose the cosmic, magnetic vibrations that rule us.’ Immersion invites viewers to experience this visionary artistic language firsthand.