Turan Selim (1915-1994) Painting Turkey Turkish Modern Art Abstract Composition Oil Signed

Original oil on paper 62 cm x 48 cm, sold with its wooden frame under glass 82 cm x 67 cm, signed lower right Selim, dating from the 60s/70s and representing an abstract composition.
Painting in very good original condition
Sold with a certificate invoice
Selim Turan (1915-1994)
Born in 1915 in a district of Istanbul, Selim Turan grew up in a family, nourished by both Western and Eastern culture. He also shares with his father a common passion for drawing and painting and cultivates pictorial experiments, both formal, chromatic and structural. Masters of traditional Turkish art such as İsmail Hakkı Altunbezer, Hattat Kamil Efendi and Necmettin Okyay also increased their students' interest in art to the point that, after high school, they joined the Academy of Fine Arts. Arts of Istanbul. The artist's years at the Academy were marked by a reform of the institution opening the way to more liberal teaching under the influence of Léopold Lévy which opened the way to a new Turkish painting, more individual, more assured and more personal, which will be influenced by artists like Selim Turan or Agop Arad. Graduating from the Academy in 1938, Selim Turan began teaching in many schools such as Sultantepe Junior School in Üsküdar, Kadıköy Art Institute and Moda Art School for Girls. Although the artist described this period as realistic, his works are less so. In his representations taken from everyday life (fishermen, schoolchildren, markets), his treatment of the theme is intended to be singular. His trip to Muğla province in 1941 marked a turning point in his production: his paintings of farmers and workers are imbued with the desire to capture individual expression. For folkloric representations, the artist substitutes an emphasis on the human figure, seen through the prism of his personal experience: this is for example the case in his Portrait of a Fisherman (1941) or in his Hashish-smoker. The Parisian years, the beginning of abstraction and the "black period" In 1944, Turan married the ceramic artist Fatma Şahika Arutay, with whom he moved to Paris three years later, thanks to a scholarship financed by the French Government (French Government Fellows). During his first years in Paris, Turan was greatly influenced by abstract art and entered into an artistic dialogue with contemporary Western artistic movements. He exhibits in art galleries and participates in joint exhibitions while his works are acquired by major European museums, from London to Vienna. Although he first worked from the lithographs of Asger Jorn, Pierre Soulages, Miró and Picasso, he then became an assistant to Hans Hartung (1904-1989), an experience which allowed him to adopt his master's approach. to become one of the leading abstract artists of his generation. His abstract works were exhibited in 1948 in Paris, within a group called La Rose des Vents, at the Galerie des Deux-Iles. At the same time, Turan benefited from a monographic exhibition at the Galerie Breteau, which was a major gallery at the time. During this period, described by critics as the "dark period", the artist frequently used abstract forms taken from the motif of the Christ crucifix in his Compositions of the 1950s, signaling a desire to go beyond the visible. From the artist to the architect via the decorator – The return to Turkey The transformations which affected the city of Paris also brought a change in Turan's art which returned to an exploration of the human figure. From 1964, he began working with the architect Jean Balladur to create works of art adorning the new buildings. He thus creates large-scale sculptures, square arrangements, and frescoes for the cities of Arles, Bordeaux, Cean, Carmeau, Passac, La Teste-de-Buch, Cotepave, Dieppe, Lacepier, Teeltiére, Lille, Nîmes , Toulouse and Marseille. He is one of the artists who place their work in the public space. This conception of the Place de l'Art brought him closer to other artists including Albert Marchais and Michèle Goalard with whom he led the project "For an architectural space" (Galerie Maywald, Paris). In 1979, Turkish President Fahri Korutürk invited Selim Turan to Istanbul where he produced works reconnecting with folkloric themes while one of his mobile sculptures was enlarged and placed in Ankara, in Kurtuluş Park in 1993. The artist also contributes to the creation of a private ethnographic gallery in Tahtakuşlar, the native village of the artist Edremit. However, he perpetuated his links with France: invited as a member of the Jury to the Sorbonne in 1991, he died in Paris itself three years later, on October 3, 1994. He was, however, buried in Turkey, after a ceremony at the Cultural Center Ataturk.