SURET-SİZ

7) Frances Stonor Saunders,
‘Parayı Verdi Düdüğü Çaldı’
(Paid the Piper and Called the
Tune), Doğan Publications and
later Kırmızı Yayıncılık (Kırmızı
Publishing).
Serge Guibaut, ‘New York
Modern Sanat Düşüncesini
Nasıl Çaldı’ (How New York
Stole the Idea of Modern
Art), Soyut Dışavurumculuk,
Özgürlük ve Soğuk Savaş
(Abstract Expressionism,
Freedom and the Cold War),
Sel Yayıncılık (Sel Publishing).
8) Mübin Orhon, Abstract
Composition, 1962,
362X112cm, Kraft-oil on
canvas, Antik Aş, catalogue
for auction of 7 November
2010
was, in the anti-soviet propaganda of the cold war years,
supported by the CIA, which backed abstract art as a
freedom-seeking reaction to socialist realism. 7
Art History teaches that Turkish artists began engaging in
an avant-garde abstract debate with a lag of fifty years. Of
the pioneers in the Turkish abstract, Nejat Melih Devrim was
the first to awaken to abstract art ( in1947). Other artists
who paved the way for abstract painting were Devrim’s
mother Fahrülnissa Zeid (from 1947), Ferruh Başağa (also
after 1947), Cemal Bingöl (from 1948) and Mübin Orhon (in
the early 1950s), the latter two doing geometrical abstract
paintings and toward the late 1950s turning to the drip
technique of the abstract expressionists, 8 Abidin Elderoğlu
with calligraphic experiments (post-1950), Adnan Turani
(also post-1950), İhsan Cemal Karaburçak (from the l950s),
Şemsi Arel with explorations in Islamic calligraphy (1951),
and from 1955 Hakkı Anlı with lyrical abstract paintings. The
Academy abstractionists Zühtü Müritoğlu, Ali Hadi Bara and
Sabri Berkel launched into the abstract beginning in 1950-
51. And a groundbreaking initiative was the exhibition held
in 1953 by Lütfü Günay and Adnan Çoker, for it consisted
entirely of abstract paintings (10-15 February 1953, Faculty of
Letters, Ankara). The figurative-nonfigurative debates within
the Academy were of an extent to comprise an entire article
in themselves.
Of those who preferred abstract art as a more individualistic,
freer and more immanent form of expression, some used
their drawing on the traditional cultural reserve of the nation
as a defense against charges of imitation, and the intellectual
side of these works gained legitimacy from the halfcompleted
Anatolian humanism of Sabahattin Eyüboğlu
and his friends. In an environment of extensive debate, art
had discovered a love of the people. The travels through
the land continued, and slide shows about them were being
given in some homes. Among the important discoveries
was Aşık Veysel. Meanwhile Sabahattin Eyüboğlu held gettogethers
in his home every Monday, where Ruhi Su joined
in with a new way of singing Turkish folk songs. At the same
time Atıf Yılmaz taught Tülay German how to play the saz in
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