"Turki was one of the founding members of the Ecole de Tunis. His work has profoundly evolved over time from his early figurative work to abstraction."
An emblematic figure of Tunisian painting, Hedi Turki was born in Tunis to a family of Turkish origin. At first, he learnt, self-taught, the fundamentals of painting, before completing an art course in Paris at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in 1951. From 1956 to 1957, he obtained a two-year scholarship to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. In 1959, he travelled to the United States, where he discovered American abstract art and enrolled in a class at Columbia University. From 1963 until his retirement in 1985, he taught at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Tunis. In 1964, Turki was one of the founding members of the Ecole de Tunis. His work has profoundly evolved over time from his early figurative work to abstraction. A further significant influence was the work of Abstract Expressionist artists, mainly of prominent American painters Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. His work was key in introducing abstract painting in Tunisia. Meanwhile, Turki's work is deeply rooted in his attachment to Tunisia and to spirituality. He lived and worked in Sidi Bou Said, Tunisia, where he died in 2019. Turki’s work has been regularly exhibited in Tunisia, France, England and across Europe.