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Nuri İyem (1915 -2005) Click for Artist Information
"Two Peasant Women"
A WORK FROM NURI İYEM’S MOST SOUGHT-AFTER PERIOD: THE 1970s…
THE 1970s: İYEM’S ICONIC “PEASANT WOMEN”…
The most sought-after and influential period in Nuri İyem’s art is undoubtedly defined by his Peasant Women series. Emerging prominently in the 1970s and reaching maturity in the 1980s, these works not only shaped İyem’s artistic legacy but also reflected the deep social and emotional layers of Anatolian life.
İyem’s peasant women figures recognizable by their wide, sorrowful eyes, solemn expressions, and stylized headscarves became enduring symbols of strength, resilience, and silent dignity. The artist stripped these figures of superfluous detail, focusing instead on the emotional depth etched into their faces. These women were not individual portraits but embodiments of a collective memory an homage to Anatolian womanhood, the hardships of rural life, and inner perseverance.
Set against simplified, at times abstracted, backgrounds, the figures radiate a profound stillness. İyem’s mastery lies in his ability to convey deep human emotion through minimal forms, resulting in works that are both timeless and sincere. His soft yet rich color palette and flattened compositions combine classical serenity with modern sensitivity.
The Peasant Women series is regarded as the pinnacle of İyem’s artistic career, with works from the 1970s especially sought after by collectors and institutions. These paintings are not only cultural icons but also emotional reflections of a country in transition bridging tradition and modernity, individuality and universality.
Oil on hardboard
40 x 29 cm
1989, signed
Provenance: Sevin & Nazım Sadikoglu Collections
Estimate: 400.000 TL - 600.000 TL
Starting Bid: 300,000 TL
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Nuri İyem
NURİ İYEM (1915-2005)
He was born in Istanbul in 1915. He worked in the workshops of Nazmi Ziya, İbrahim Çallı and Hikmet Onat at the Istanbul State Academy of Fine Arts (now known as Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University). He took lessons from Leopold Levy for a while. During these years, he took part in the formation of the "New Group", which would bring new suggestions to figurative tendencies and content problematic in Turkish Painting. Nuri İyem's art was shaped under abstract and modern figurative periods.
He abandoned the concept of abstract painting, which he focused on after 1950, in the 1960s, and followed a period in which his paintings included people migrating from villages to cities, scenes from slum life, and portraits of young women. Concrete content and pictorial structure (architecture), solid construction in the sense of nature, are the main elements that characterize İyem's painting. The reaction, mystery and questioning of the Anatolian steppe can be seen in those eyes, which come to the fore in Nuri İyem's portraits of rural women, which are considered his symbols. Although he produced works in all types of painting, portraits, especially female portraits, have a significant importance in Nuri İyem's art. Among these, her portraits of Anatolian women and her landscapes with figures are the ones that are most engraved in the viewer's memory.
Nuri İyem thoroughly evaluated and realized his Anatolian women series, especially in single and triple compositions, within all pictorial fiction and expression possibilities. The texture of the Anatolian soil is meticulously crafted and strongly expressed in every square centimeter of the paintings. The portraits, each of which brings to mind an icon with its purity, go beyond the stylistic limits of the icon tradition by embarking on a long journey in the endless universe of expression of the human face. He passed away in Istanbul in 2005.
