Biography
Yahia Turki (born Yahia Ben Mohamed Ben Hadj Rejeb El Hajjem) was born in Istanbul in 1902 (the date of birth remains uncertain) to a Turkish mother and a Tunisian father from Djerba, Tunisia. His mother, a skilled embroiderer who worked alongside her son, introduced young Yahia to forms, colours, and decorative motifs, nurturing his aesthetic sensibility from an early age. She passed away when he was merely six years old. Subsequently, his father decided to return to Tunisia, where he established a hairdressing business with his brother on Léon Roches Street (now Mustapha M’barek Street) in Tunis.
Turki completed his primary studies at the Sadiki Secondary School annexe before attending Carnot High School. At the same time, his frequent visits to the Quranic school proved formative. According to artist and scholar Khaled Lasram (1949–), he first encountered the ornate calligraphic work created by master calligraphers on writing tablets. Demonstrating talent and passion for this craft, he was charged with decorating the tablets of students. Through this experience, Turki became familiar with drawing and colours, learning to handle plant-based dyes and natural colourants commonly employed in decorative art.
At Alaoui High School, Turki encountered several influential instructors, including orientalist and colonial painters Georges-Jean Lemare (1866–1942) and Alexandre Fichet (1881–1967). Despite these promising artistic beginnings and Lemare’s encouragement, Turki was compelled to interrupt his artistic education due to poor health and pressure from his father. He entered public service, working for five years in the Civil Service as a Finance Administrative Officer. This administrative position enabled him to purchase art supplies, allowing him to continue drawing and painting.
In 1923, Turki first exhibited at the Tunisian Salon, presenting two oil paintings: Voûte de Hadjamine (Hadjiamine’s Dwelling) and Place Bab Souika (Bab Souika Square). Fichet, the salon’s president, who already knew him from Alaoui High School, praised Turki’s progress and encouraged him to perfect his mastery of classical perspective whilst enriching his knowledge of art history. Inspired by this recognition, Turki abandoned his administrative duties and dedicated himself entirely to artistic education at the newly opened Centre d’enseignement d’art, where its director, Pierre Boyer (1865–1933), encouraged him to enrol and helped him obtain a student maintenance grant in 1924. However, after five months, he discontinued his studies, seeking to develop both technical skills and theoretical knowledge, distinct from the French colonial representations of North Africa that dominated the artistic landscape of his time.
In his quest to develop an autonomous artistic voice, Turki explored the medina in search of subject matter reflecting what he termed a genuine Tunisian perspective. He wandered through streets and neighbourhoods, sketching and painting plein air scenes of daily life. Though he adopted European techniques, he aimed for his representations to embody what might be called a local culture in reaction to the exotic, Orientalist gaze favoured by colonial artists residing in Tunisia.
Turki’s artistic education continued in Paris, where he lived between 1926 and 1928 and again between 1931 and 1935. During these periods, he frequented independent academies such as Académie Jullian and La Grande Chaumière, where he encountered diverse artistic influences and executed works that represented Gothic architecture, nudes, European landscapes, and numerous sketches and drawings.
The Parisian experience proved pivotal in shaping Turki’s artistic philosophy. The Impressionist movement particularly inspired him. Turki merged Impressionist principles with contemporary Tunisian subject matter, marking a crucial moment in the emergence of a creative practice rooted in local observation and experience. Returning to Tunisia, Turki consolidated his vision by focusing on what art historian Alia Nakhli termed “Tunisianness” (al-tawnisiyya/al-dhat at-tunisiyya/al-shakhsiyya al-tunisiyya). This concept, subsequently adopted by independentist ideology during the late colonial period and later by President Habib Bourguiba’s vision during and after independence, echoed the nationalist sentiment emerging at the time. His approach balanced the technical skills and theoretical knowledge of modern art, acquired from colonial institutions, with his commitment to documenting the realities of contemporary Tunisian society. This approach differed markedly from French North African Late-Orientalism.
Artist and scholar Aïcha Filali (1956–) classified Turki’s oeuvre into six categories: the medina (street scenes, daily life, crowds, architectural spaces), portraiture, still life, landscape, atmospheric studies (comprising highlights from idealised Tunisian community life including weddings, male gatherings, olive harvesting, visits to the dead), and miscellaneous works executed primarily during his European sojourns.
During the post-independence reconstruction period, the Tunisian government commissioned Turki to create significant decorative works for public spaces and institutions. The government and the municipalities of Tunis subsequently acquired several of his works throughout Tunisia.
Beloved by both colonial and indigenous circles, Turki became widely regarded as what Aly Ben Salem termed the “father”—or, in Hatim El Mekki’s (1918–2003) words, the “Malherbe”—of Tunisian painting. Terms such as “image-maker,” “storyteller,” “colourist,” and “naïve” came to define the career of this painter, who narrated the lives of ordinary people in European pictorial techniques while employing resolutely Tunisian subjects.
Turki became part of the Groupe des Dix (Group of Ten) in 1947 and was then renamed the École de Tunis (Tunis School) in 1951. Following Tunisia’s independence in 1956, he succeeded Pierre Boucherle (1894–1988) as president of the Tunis School, marking the transformation of a colonial institution into a national one presided over by a “Muslim” painter for the first time, as most sources of that time indicate. He held this position until 1967, two years before he died in 1969.
In addition to his presidency, Turki served as vice-president of the Tunisian Salon and held a teaching position at the École normale supérieure de Tunis. His association with the Tunis School facilitated his participation in major international group exhibitions, designed to promote Tunisian art and national identity. Notable amongst these was his contribution to the 29th Venice Biennale in 1958, where he exhibited Mariage à Djerba (Wedding in Djerba, 1955), alongside his involvement in numerous cultural diplomatic exhibitions throughout the late 1950s and 1960s.
Turki played a crucial role in establishing a distinctly Tunisian artistic identity that would influence subsequent generations of painters, successfully bridging the gap between colonial artistic traditions and post-independence national expression. Turki’s contribution to Tunisian art also encompassed institutional leadership and art education. His work established the foundation for what would become a recognisable Tunisian painting, one that maintained technical sophistication whilst asserting cultural authenticity. Upon Yahia Turki’s death in 1969, Galerie municipal des arts, located within the Palmarium complex, was renamed Galerie Yahia Turki. This complex was demolished following independence. Today, the Palmarium is no longer a cultural centre but a commercial complex, where a small gallery named after Yahia Turki remains on the fourth floor, serving as a testament to his enduring influence on Tunisia’s artistic landscape.
