“Towards A Sky”, 1953, by Fahrelnissa Zeid

At 593 by 201cm, this canvas painting is truly monumental. So much so that, although it is intended to be displayed vertically (as shown by historic photographs of the painter next to her creation), due to height restrictions it has typically been displayed horizontally.

Fahrelnissa Zeid (1901-1991) was a Turkish artist whose work blended elements of Islamic and Byzantine art with abstraction and influences from western art. She lived and worked in Istanbul, Berlin, Paris, and Amman. When “Towards a Sky” was exhibited at the London Institute of Contemporary Arts in 1954, Zeid was the first woman to have a solo exhibition there. In 2017, the Tate organised a major retrospective of the artist, referring to her as ‘one of the greatest female artists of the 20th century’. Zeid said: ‘I did not ‘intend’ to become an abstract painter; I was a person working very conventionally with forms and values. But flying by plane transformed me... The world is upside down. A whole city could be held in your hand: the world seen from above’. Zeid kept a photograph of “Towards A Sky” at her bedside until she passed away.

The painting spent thirty years in one collection and then another thirty years in a large corporate collection in the States who eventually took the decision to deacquisition it in 2016, when it was brought to Simon Gillespie Studio for conservation treatment. After treatment, it went on to a record breaking sale at Sotheby’s in April 2017, going under the hammer for almost £1m, twice over its estimate.

The canvas had been reduced in size by the artist herself and an important fragment was discovered by Bonhams, who sold it in the same season.

Since its 2017 sale to a prestigious private collector, the painting has been exhibited to the public in 2022-2023 at the Abu Dhabi Cultural Foundation.