Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu Click for Artist Information

Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu

BEDRİ RAHMİ EYÜBOĞLYU (1911 - 1975)

He was born in Giresun in 1911. He became a student of Nazmi Ziya Güran and İbrahim Çallı at the Istanbul State Academy of Fine Arts (now known as Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University). He went to France in 1931; After staying in France for two years, he moved to London. He worked in the Dijon and Lyon workshops in France for the first year, and in the André Lhote Workshop in Paris for the second year. He returned to Istanbul in 1933 and attended the Academy, and after graduating in 1936, he started working as a workshop instructor at the Academy. Since the 1940s, he has turned to works that combine Anatolian Folk Arts Motifs and Calligraphy-based paintings with his own stylized figure formations. In his works created with different tools and techniques, he built bridges specific to his own understanding of art, between the rich experience and knowledge of Western art and the products of local and traditional folk art. He is a painter who attaches more importance to color within the understanding of art of our age.

Folk art, which he defines as the art of telling a lot with little material, constitutes an inexhaustible source in Bedri Rahmi's paintings, which are shaped by an enthusiastic production. He was the first to discover this source in our contemporary art of painting and inspired his students that the ways to produce original art should be sought first in this source and in life. He also contributed greatly to his period as an art writer. He won the third prize in the first State Painting and Sculpture Exhibition held in 1939, the second prize in the 4th State Painting and Sculpture Exhibition in 1942, and the first prize in the 33rd State Painting and Sculpture Exhibition in 1972. In 1958, he won the Brussels Fair Grand Prize with his 272m2 mosaic panel. The artist, who won the medal of honor at the Sao Paulo Biennial in 1969, passed away in Istanbul in 1975.