Point of departure
It is hard to decide whether the waiting room depicted in this oil-on-plywood painting is a nice place. This station seems to be richly furnished – perhaps better than the austere train terminals of today – but it does look a tad lively.
Shapes of things
The blobby brushstrokes are a mark of the artist’s work to come. Later paintings take the battle between figurative and abstraction to extremes. For now, we are given a recognisable scene, although the subject is colour as much as travel.
Bohemian rhapsody
This formative work was created after Zeid’s own period of travel. Born of a prominent Ottoman family in 1901, she was back in Istanbul in 1943, having previously moved to Iraq with her diplomat husband. Before that, she had immersed herself in the bohemian art scenes of Venice, Paris and Berlin.
Cultural pickings
The artist, who was one of the first women in Istanbul to receive an art education, was a consummate appropriator of culture, picking up vernacular craft aesthetics as she travelled the world. This work borrows as much from Arab tapestry and Byzantine heritage as it does European modernism.
Part of Fahrelnissa Zeid at Tate Modern, SE1, to 8 October
