Abstract
Hédi Turki (1922–2019) was a Tunisian visual artist and educator whose career coincided from the 1940s onward with the development of modern and contemporary art in Tunisia. Associated with the École de Tunis from the 1950s, he developed a distinctive practice with two parallel tracks alternating between figurative drawing and abstract painting, with his encounter with American Abstract Expressionism during a 1959 visit to the United States marking the introduction of abstraction into his artistic repertoire. His later paintings incorporated superimposed systems of coloured lines that he associated with childhood memories of weaving, while his drawing practice remained rooted in direct observation of nature and documentary studies of Tunisian life, its people, and their manner of dressing. Although his interest in abstraction distinguished him from approaches to national cultural identity pursued by other members of the École de Tunis, he remained closely connected to the group throughout his career. Alongside his artistic practice, Turki was an influential teacher, mentor, and cultural administrator, who supported younger generations of Tunisian artists and participated in national, pan-Arab, pan-African, and international artistic networks.
Biography
Artist’s social and cultural background
Hédi Turki was born and raised in the historic Halfaouine district of Tunis, the eldest of seven brothers in a family of Turkish descent on his father's side. During his childhood, he spent extended periods with his grandfather, a silk weaver who worked in the Tunis medina. His early life was marked by the death of his father, Mustapha Turki in 1939. This was followed by the death of his mother a few years later—circumstances which forced him to assume financial responsibility for supporting his younger siblings, many of whom were also artistically inclined (his younger brother, Zoubeir Turki (1924–2009), became one of Tunisia's leading visual artists, while several of his other siblings also pursued artistic careers in music and the visual arts). In 1948, he married Jamila Skhiri, with whom he had four sons and three daughters.
Art education and artistic career
Turki received his primary education at the École franco-arabe of Place Halfaouine (ca. 1928–1934), followed by studies at the École annexe du Collège Sadiki (ca. 1934–1936) and the Lycée Carnot (ca. 1936–1940), where he distinguished himself in drawing. Among his drawing instructors were the artists Arsène Dumas, Maurice Picard (1886–1941), and Robert Hue (1909–1977), the last of whom was a prominent painter who later served as Commissaire Général of the Salon Tunisien. Established in 1894, the Salon Tunisien was the capital’s principal annual art exhibition and, by the early twentieth century, had become one of the most anticipated gatherings of visual artists in Tunisia. Following the death of his father and the outbreak of the Second World War, he was forced to interrupt his studies, and between 1940 and 1941 he worked a variety of jobs—including as an apprentice tailor—before being hired, on 21 May 1941, as a clerk at the Caisse Foncière de Tunisie, a financial institution responsible for issuing agricultural and real estate loans that was dissolved after Tunisian independence.
Although he needed to provide for his siblings, his artistic practice did not cease with professional employment. His first documented participation in an art exhibition was in the 1945 Artists' Syndicate Salon, where the press where the press noted him among the promising young painters
In approximately 1951, he spent two months studying art at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. In 1956, he resigned from the Caisse Foncière after receiving a one-year scholarship from the Italian government to study at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome, where he trained under the painter Amerigo Bartoli Natinguerra (1890–1971). Upon returning to Tunis in 1957, he was appointed drawing teacher at the Collège Technique Émile Loubet—renamed the Collège National Technique in 1958, and known today as the Lycée du 9 Avril 1938.
During the summer of 1959, Turki travelled to the United States for three months, including six-weeks at Columbia University in New York as a teacher grantee – a professional development fellowship awarded to practicing educators. He studied in New York with the sculptor Vincent Glinsky (1895–1975) and also encountered the drip paintings of Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) and the linear abstractions of Mark Tobey (1890–1976). He travelled extensively across the United States during his stay, including an artistically important visit to Niagara Falls. Turki described his encounter with American abstraction and the Niagara Falls as decisive to his artistic development in an autobiographical essay published in the catalogue for his 1993–1994 retrospective at the Maison des Arts du Belvédère. Standing before the falls, he recalled painting what he considered his first abstract gouache, inspired by the landscape, light, and sensation of the image dissolving in the mists of the falls.
After returning to Tunis at the end of 1959, he resumed his teaching post at the Collège National Technique. In December 1963 he was appointed professor of drawing, painting, and visual expression at the École des Beaux-Arts de Tunis (an institution that in 1973 became the Institut d'Art, d'Architecture et d'Urbanisme de Tunis), a post he held until his retirement in 1985, continuing on as a visiting lecturer until about 1990.
His first solo exhibition took place in February 1960 at the Salon des Arts in Tunis, where he showed abstract gouaches together with early sculptural experiments—works that elicited a strong reaction from the viewing public. In December 1965, he held a solo exhibition at the Galerie Municipale des Arts in Tunis that included nearly 200 drawings, 60 of which were studies of Tunisian traditional costume—the first time a Tunisian painter had exhibited drawings alone. The exhibition was inaugurated by Chedly Klibi (1925–2020), then serving as Secretary of State for Cultural Affairs.
From late 1966 to the autumn of 1967, he interrupted his teaching to undertake a year-long residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. The residency led to his first solo exhibition abroad, from 23 January to 14 February 1968 at the Galerie Vercamer in Paris. Here he presented 26 large-format abstract paintings, with an accompanying pamphlet by the art historian Jean Rudel.
Hédi Turki exhibited with the École de Tunis from at least February 1959, when he showed two portraits of children as well as a nude at the group's annual exhibition. The catalogue of his 1993 retrospective dates his entry into the group to the early 1950s; he remained associated with it throughout his life. Formally constituted around 1950, the École de Tunis brought together Tunisian, French, and Italian artists, most of whom were painters, and constituted the first organised group of modern artists in Tunisia. Following the end of the French Protectorate in 1956, the group played a central role in shaping the artistic discourses and practices associated with the construction of a Tunisian national culture.
Turki also played a formative role in the careers of younger artists. In 1941, he encouraged his brother Zoubeir to enroll at the École des Beaux-Arts, and he later supported artists including Rafik El Kamel (1944–2021) and Gouider Triki (b. 1949). His international connections also helped younger Tunisian artists to receive residencies at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. In turn, despite their critical stance toward the École de Tunis, artists associated with younger collectives invited him to exhibit: Groupe 70, which formed around 1970 partly in reaction to the École's dominance, included him as a guest in three exhibitions, and in 1980 he exhibited with the Irtissem group.
At home, Turki served as Commissaire Général of the Salon Tunisien from around 1972, a tenure documented as lasting through 1980. He served as Secretary General of the National Union of Plastic and Graphic Arts (UNAPG) in the late 1970s and, when the union was reconstituted in the 1980s, returned as its president. He also served in international arts organisations, including a seat on the executive committee of the UNESCO-affiliated Association Internationale des Arts Plastiques (AIAP) from 1969—becoming its life-time Counsellor in 1979—and vice president for the Arab region in 1983; he was also elected to the Conseil Français des Arts Plastiques in 1971.
Turki played an equally active part in the development of pan-Arab and pan-African artistic networks. In December 1971, he represented Tunisia as the country’s sole delegate to the First Arab Congress of Fine Arts in Damascus where the Union of Arab Plastic Artists was founded. In 1977, he led the Tunisian delegation to FESTAC 77 in Lagos.
In 1978, he settled in Sidi Bou Saïd, where he would live and work for the rest of his life.
