Yahia Turki
Yahia Turki (Arabic: يحيى التركي; born Yahia Ben Mahmoud El Hajjem; 1903 in Istanbul – 1 March 1969) was a Tunisian painter often called the father of Tunisian painting. After Tunisia gained independence in 1956, he became president of the École de Tunis, a school founded in 1947 to unite Tunisian artists and create a national painting style.
He was born in Istanbul to a Turkish mother and a Djerbian father. Turki studied at Sadiki College and the Lycée Carnot in Tunis, and he also attended a Koranic school where he first noticed how form and color can be arranged on writing tablets. He continued at the Lycée Alaoui, where drawing teacher Georges Le Mare spotted his talent. Because of family pressure, he left school to work in the civil service, but he also trained at the Centre for Art Studies, which in 1930 became the Tunis Institute of Fine Arts.
Turki achieved his first success in 1923 at the Tunisian salon. His first painting was an oil on canvas. He won a scholarship to Paris in 1927, where he interacted with Albert Marquet and Lucien Mainssieux. He studied at the Centre d’art de Tunis with support from the French Protectorate, helped by Alexandre Fichet and Pierre Boyer. In 1928 he stayed in France and took part in the Colonial Exhibition and the Salon des Indépendants. During his stays in Paris (1926–1928 and 1931–1935) he visited studios of Matisse and Derain. He returned to Tunis in 1935 and exhibited works with Parisian themes.
Turki joined Groupe des Dix in 1947 and was one of the founders of the École de Tunis in 1948. After independence, he led the École de Tunis and served as vice-president of the Tunisian salon. His art often showed architectural spaces, landscapes, still lifes, and portraits of everyday Tunisian life. In the 1950s he painted murals at the Agricultural School in Moghrane. His students included Abdelaziz ben Rais, Hatem El Mekki, and Ammar Farhat. Some of his works have sold at auction, such as Femme en sefsari, which sold in 2013 for about $9,500.
He married a Tunisian woman and had a daughter named Nazly.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 05:18 (CET).