Selim Turan (1915-1994) Click for Artist Information

Selim Turan

SELİM TURAN (1915 - 1994) 

Selim Turan was born in Istanbul in 1915. As his father was one of the leading members of the Committee of Union and Progress, while growing up, Turan was strongly influenced by his father's ideal of embracing the essence of both Western and Eastern cultures. The artist, who has been interested in painting since a young age, was influenced by İsmail Hakkı Altunbezer, Calligrapher Kamil Efendi and Necmettin Okyay, who are important masters of traditional Turkish arts. At the same time, Turan's interest in painting gradually increased while he was a student at Galatasaray High School, and in 1935 he entered the Istanbul State Academy of Fine Arts.

In his first years at the academy, he attended the workshops of Feyhaman Duran, Nazmi Ziya and Zeki Kocamemi, one of the artists of the so-called 1914 Generation. However, within the scope of the university reforms implemented by the Ministry of National Education, a more liberal approach was adopted when Léopold Lévy (1882-1966) was appointed head of the Painting Department. Under Lévy's influence, Selim Turan and other students, including Agop Arad, Nuri İyem, Tiraje Dikmen and Naile Akıncı, brought a new individuality and self-confidence to modern Turkish painting. The 'Port' exhibition, which was held at Beyoğlu Printing House in 1941, an important turning point in the country's art history, and featured the works of Selim Turan, Nuri İyem, Haşmet Akal, Agop Arad, Avni Arbaş, Turgut Atalay, Abidin Dino, was Turan's first group exhibition. It was an exhibition. Selim Turan graduated from the Academy in 1938, and the next few years were a period of discovery and search for his own path as an artist. Meanwhile, she worked as an art teacher in various schools, especially Üsküdar Sultantepe Secondary School, Kadıköy Art Institute and Moda Girls' Art School. Although the artist described his works in this period as 'realistic', he did not interpret his subjects in a purely realistic manner. While Turan depicted subjects from daily life such as fishermen, school children, and markets, he handled the themes from a structural perspective and interpreted them with his brush. He took part in the Homeland Journeys project initiated by the Republican People's Party in 1941. As part of this project, he went to the southwestern province of Muğla and painted working people there, such as tobacco farmers, sponge hunters and dried fig packers.

In 1947, he went to Paris with a scholarship from the French Government and continued his painting studies in various workshops. In his early years in Paris, he was influenced by abstract art like other members of his generation, and became one of the Turkish artists who changed their critical direction as a result of his experiences in that city. Unlike the previous artists who were sent to Paris as cultural ambassadors during the late Ottoman and early Republican periods and were expected to only bring existing art movements to Turkey, the generation that went to Paris after 1945 entered into dialogue with contemporary art movements. They held solo exhibitions at leading galleries of the time and participated in group exhibitions, subjecting applications to a selection process. His works have been acquired for leading museum collections in France, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands and Austria. Initially, Turan printed lithographs and etchings by artists such as Asgar Jorn, Pierre Soulages, Miró and Picasso in various original printing studios, later working as an assistant to Hans Hartung (1904-1989). This experience enabled him to absorb first-hand the artistic approach of the period, and he became one of the leading representatives of this generation. Turan's abstract paintings were exhibited for the first time in a group exhibition called 'La Rose des Vents' (Pinwheel) in Paris in 1948.

He opened his first nonfigurative personal exhibition in 1950 at "Gallery Breteau" and later exhibited his works in "Salon de Mai" and "Salon de Comparaison". The artist, who also made marble sculptures between 1975-79, created his first moving sculptures, called mobile, in 1976. Turan, who painted landscapes and paintings with social content under the influence of impressionism and cubism before Paris, later turned to abstract art. Line and stain harmony, balance, relationship and compositional character are the main qualities that determine Selim Turan's abstract works. He created lyrical abstract and figurative abstract works under the influence of Eastern arts, calligraphy and Anatolian folklore. He is among the pioneers in Contemporary Turkish Painting with his abstractist works. He died in Paris in 1994.