Considered the father of Tunisian painting, Yahia Turki was the first Tunisian artist to exhibit in the Salon Tunis, set up by the colonial community to showcase European art. He devoted his practice to translating on his canvas through painting, the beauty of his country. The greater part of his pictorial universe takes place within the labyrinthine medina, that traditional architectural and urban space standing in contrast to the European city. Turki repeatedly affirmed that his aim was to render, through colour and form, the aesthetic essence of Tunisia, choosing subjects that almost always depict a specific place or ceremony, fixed on canvas and titled simply after the scene represented. In his work, figures are never portrayed for themselves, nor as vessels of psychological expression, but as plastic matter integrated into the compositional balance of the painting, equal in weight to architecture, textiles, and the chromatic field that envelops them. In Au Hammam, the human element is depicted on a scale that accords it the same importance as the architectural frame that contains it. There is no exaggerated hierarchy of perspective; rather, the figures share an equal spatial and narrative presence. His subjects are represented in close proximity, involved in a common action that suggests participation rather than mere figuration. These characters, often shown frontally, seem to pose, their stillness conveying a hieratic calm. The details of garments, such as striped foutas and embroidered sarouels, enliven his compositions, while the artist’s chromatic inventiveness extends to the architecture itself, to the columns and arcades. Yet these anecdotal elements are only pretexts for painting: devices to animate space and evoke, through form and colour, the conviviality of these semi-private, semi-public interiors. In Bédouine à la Kassâa, Yahia turns toward portraiture, but his figures remain archetypal rather than psychological. The faces, barely modelled and illuminated by a soft, uncertain light, offer only the minimal clues necessary for recognition. Expression yields to structure, and through this restraint, another form of expressivity emerges.