Fahrelnissa Zeid, Untitled, ca. 1950 - 1960, Oil on Canvas, 55.5 x 75.5 cm.

Fahrelnissa Zeid (Turkish, 1901 Istanbul – 1991 Amman) was born into an elite Ottoman family in Istanbul in 1901. There, she was one of the first women to receive a formal training in art, before attending Académie Ranson in Paris in the late 1920s. Fahrelnissa Zeid was an active figure in the art and cultural scene in all the cities she has lived in, such as Paris and London. She was relocated to Berlin and later Baghdad upon her second marriage to the Iraqi Prince, Zeid Al-Hussein in 1935. She developed her own European approach to abstraction while drawing inspiration from Byzantine arts and geometric patterns in Islamic art.