Unlike many Turkish artists of her time who were inspired by Impressionism and classical art movements, she was an important proponent of Cubism in Turkey, an influence especially obvious in her self-portraits, portraits and still-life paintings.

Although she had a recurrence of disease that required surgery on her lungs, she passed the entrance exams for the Prussian Academy of Arts and became a student of Arthur Kampf.

She returned home after the war and enrolled at the İnas Sanayi-i Nefise Mektebi (School of Fine Arts) where she studied with Feyhaman Duran and İbrahim Çallı.

[3] From 1927 to 1928 she was back in Paris at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, studying with André Lhote[4] and taking private lessons from İsmail Hakkı Oygar [tr], a noted ceramic artist, who became her fiancé.

He took her position at the girls' school and she took his at the İstanbul Devlet Güzel Sanatlar Akademisi (Istanbul State Academy of Fine Arts).

During her convalescence, she met the Italian writer Antonio Aniante who operated the Galerie-Librarie Jeune Europe and offered her the position of director there.

The gallery closed in 1934 and Aniante's books were banned in some parts of Europe because of his opposition to Benito Mussolini, causing the couple's financial situation to deteriorate.