Safia Farhat

Safia Farhat, born Foudhaili in Radès in 1924 and died in 2004, was a pioneer of the visual arts in Tunisia. Alongside her work as a painter, she was an academic and a women's rights activist. She is best remembered for introducing modern tapestry to her country, and her output spans design, painting, ceramics, upholstery and decorative arts, using materials such as stamps, ceramics, stained glass and tapestry.

She was educated in France and Tunisia, including at the Tunis Institute of Fine Arts. In 1949 she took part in the École de Tunis movement, the only woman associated with the group. During the period of Tunisian Socialism she helped build collaborations between artists and craftspeople from the state-run craft industry. She became the first woman and the first Tunisian to direct the postcolonial School of Fine Arts in Tunis, a role that helped shift an academy dominated by men toward one that trained a generation of women artists and teachers. From 1966 she directed the Tunis Institute of Fine Arts, heading its new School of Architecture.

In 1959 she founded Faiza, the first Tunisian women's magazine after independence, and she designed Tunisian postage stamps. She presided over the Association des peintres et amateurs d'art en Tunisie and co-founded the decoration company Zin. In 1981, together with her husband Ammar Farhat, she founded the Centre des Arts Vivants in Rades, which the couple donated to the Tunisian state. She created stained glass, drawings, paintings, reliefs, frescoes and, above all, decorative tapestries.