Zühtü Müridoğlu Click for Artist Information

Zühtü Müridoğlu

Zühtü Müridoğlu (1906 - 1992)

He was born in Istanbul in 1906. He studied at the İhsan Özsoy Workshop in the Sculpture Department of the Istanbul State Academy of Fine Arts (now known as Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University) (1924-1928). He studied for a year at the Marcel Gimond Workshop at the Colorassi Academy in Paris with a European Scholarship. Meanwhile, he continued his art history courses at the Louvre and aesthetics courses at the Sorbonne. After returning to Turkey, he worked as an art teacher (1932-1936). He was among the founders of D Group. He worked as a sculptor at the Istanbul Archaeological Museum in 1936. He worked as a teacher at Ankara Gazi Education Institute for a while (1939). Later, he became a modeling teacher at the Decorative Arts Department of the Academy of Fine Arts. He stayed in Paris between 1947-1949. When he returned to Turkey, he was appointed as a workshop teacher in the Sculpture Department of the Academy. He opened the Wood Application Workshop in 1955. He received the title of "professor" in 1969. He won the Sedat Simavi Foundation (1977) and Atatürk Art Gift (1981) awards. He opened his first personal exhibition in 1932. Monumental composition would maintain and develop a consistent form line in terms of mass and surface fusion in single figure and relief works. After 1953, he turned to abstract understanding and worked on "nature purification" by sorting and polishing tree branches and roots or covering them with thin copper sheets. Later, he arranged compositions with elements he shaped himself, also from wood. After 1975, it returned to its old form. Müridoğlu's directly abstract sculptures, in which he used wood together with copper and iron, were followed by dancing bronze female figures in the 1980s. Motion, whether figurative or abstract, has been one of Müridoğlu's main subjects of interest. He passed away in 1992.