Looking back at the life of the artist Fahrelnissa Zeid is to take a drama-filled tour of 20th-century Turkey, Europe and the Middle East. Zeid, with works exhibited in Turkey and Europe this year, lived a life that is much like her work — colorful and big.

Kerryn Greenberg, curator of international art at the Tate Modern London and co-curator of the Tate's current exhibition “Fahrelnissa Zeid,” said about her to The National, “It’s astonishing that an artist of such force and originality should have been practically forgotten.” This situation has been somewhat remedied, as Zeid — Ottoman aristocrat, painter, princess, ambassadress and teacher — takes a turn in the international spotlight this year with an exhibition not only in London, but also in Turkey (Istanbul Modern), Germany (Deutsche Bank KunstHalle Berlin) and Lebanon (Sursock Museum, Beirut).

Zeid led a myriad of intriguing lives. She was born Fahrunnisa Sakir in 1901 to an affluent Ottoman family in Istanbul and was raised on Buyukada, the largest of the Princes' Islands, a short distance from the city. Her family, full of creative people, never lacked for drama. At the age of 12, her father, Mehmet Sakir Pasha, a statesman and historian, was shot dead by Cevat Sakir, her older brother, who would later become an eminent writer under the pen name “The Fisherman of Halicarnassus.” This tragedy left its mark on the entire family. Zeid suffered depression all her life and found refuge in painting, which she initially thought would be no more than a hobby.

At the age of 19, Fahrunnisa enrolled in the newly founded Academy of Fine Arts for Women but dropped out after marrying the novelist Izzet Melih Devrim in 1920. Through Devrim, the couple became members of the close circle around Kemal Ataturk, founder of the then-young Turkish Republic. In 1934, Fahrunnisa met Prince Zeid bin Hussein, Iraq's ambassador to Turkey, and divorced Devrim to marry him.