Yahia Turki, born Yahia Ben Mahmoud El Hajjem in 1903 in Istanbul, Turkey, died March 1, 1969. He was a Tunisian painter described as the "father of Tunisian painting".

Born in Istanbul to a Turkish mother and a Djerbian father, Turki studied first at Sadiki College and later at the Lycée Carnot de Tunis. At the same time, he attended a Koranic school, where his interest was piqued, for the first time, by the arrangement of form and colour on writing tablets. He pursued his secondary school studies at the Lycée Alaoui, where he had as a drawing teacher Georges Le Mare, who discovered the talents of the young novice and where he applied himself to learning the basics of the discipline. Faced with family pressures, Turki ab...