Sabri Berkel Click for Artist Information

Sabri Berkel

Sabri Berkel (1907 - 1993)

He was born in Skopje in 1907. He graduated from the Belgrade School of Fine Arts. He worked in the Felice Carena Workshop at the Florence Academy of Fine Arts and studied fresco and engraving for two years. He went to Paris and watched the work at the Lhote Workshop. He participated in the Venice and Sao-Paulo Biennials with his engravings. In 1949, he was appointed as gallery instructor in the Department of Decorative Arts at the Academy. He served as Head of the Department of Painting between 1965-69. In 1977, he was appointed as the Director of the Painting and Sculpture Museum. He traveled and made observations in European countries. In Sabri Berkel's paintings between 1930 and 1950, nudes, portraits and still life works focused on formal problems predominate. Berkel, who participated in the Independent Painters and Sculptors Association exhibitions in 1939 and the "Group D" exhibitions in 1941 and 1945, is one of our artists who made the first abstract experiments and original examples in Turkish painting with his works in 1947.

Towards the 1950s, Berkel turned to series of paintings on the theme of "abstract-geometric arabesques". He then enters the period of thick-lined abstract compositions created on large color areas that also include calligraphic values. In his paintings after 1960, he completely moved away from the figure and his unique abstract works with calligraphy and arabesque characters consisting of pure thick lines and color areas are observed. He is one of the first names to initiate abstract painting as an artist movement in Turkey. His works, which dealt with this genre at the compositional level, continued in a determined discipline until the end of his life. These compositions, based on the tonal values of two or three colors, are among the typical and unique examples of pure-abstract understanding in Turkish painting. The artist, who received the First Prize at the 22nd State Painting and Sculpture Exhibition in 1961 and the Honorary Award of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in 1984, passed away in Istanbul in 1993.