Footnotes

NO RESERVE

Provenance:
Property from a private collection, England
Property from the collection of Fahr-El Nissa Zeid's personal assistant, gifted directly from the artist circa 1970's

Notes:
The present work is a study for a painting exhibited at the Lords Gallery, St Johns Wood, London in summer 1957. An original copy of the Lord's Gallery exhibition catalogue accompanies the present work

The following painting is a significant and recently discovered study of one of Faherlnissa Zeid's most important and well known works.

From an extensive collection of works given to her personal assistant in the mid 1970's when she left her homes in London and Paris to return to Amman, the majority of the collection was sold in these rooms in October 2012 setting a world record for a group of works by the artist.

The present work is a smaller study of a monumental painting titled "Towards a Sky" which was exhibited at the Lords Gallery in 1957 and subsequently was displayed at the Museum of Modern Arts, Paris. An artist with one of the most diverse repertoires in the Middle East, Fahrelnissa oscillated between abstraction, expressionism, portrait art and landscape painting. Her monumental abstracts are considered the purest synthesis of her work; an amalgam of Islamic geometric influences and European abstract modes of representation colour and shape Zeid's abstract works.

The French writer and art critic, Charles Estienne, with whom Fahrelnissa collaborated several works, wrote: "Her paintings portray the parade of strange nations that migrate from one place to another; they expose -- in strange lights turning to crimson-reds, blues of huge glass cases, heavy as lead coils, enveloped in violent blacks. This light resembles the fabulous lights of Gothic stained glasses. Let this thick and impenetrable wall of Eastern stained glass, which grasps one in an unknown and transparent way, be a boundless and free line conveying the latest messages of Islamic arts to French art..."

Profusely creative and astoundingly versatile Fahr El Nissa Zeid was an artist par excellence. One of the first women to attend the Fine Arts Academy in Istanbul, Fahr El-Nissa went on train at the Academi Ranson in Paris under Roger Bissiere. After marrying into the Hashemite Royal family of Jordan Fahr El-Nissa participated in a spate of international solo exhibitions in London, Paris, and New York and the Middle East before settling in Amman in 1976, after the death of her husband Prince Zeid.

Zeid addressed a variety of themes and subjects in her artworks, including scenes of everyday life and portraits of family members, relatives, and friends. In her portraits, Zeid exaggerated her subjects' features. The large rounded eyes and elongated faces she rendered are reminiscent of Byzantine iconography and Egyptian Fayum portraits. Although Zeid's art is predominantly abstract, her style is unique and draws on Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam.