Mustafa Ata Click for Artist Information

Mustafa Ata

Mustafa Ata (1945 - )

He was born in Trabzon in 1945. He studied at Adnan Çoker Workshop, Department of Painting, Istanbul State Academy of Fine Arts (now known as Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University). He conducted research in art centers of various European countries in 1971, 1973, 1980-81, 1990-91. He participated in exhibitions in Munich, Kassel, Copenhagen, Tokyo, Darmstadt, Philadelphia and Cairo. His book "Synthetic Plastic Materials, Forming Methods, Use in Art" was published in 1978.

Ata is busy with figures, but he does not paint figures. He does not work from a model, nor does he start from photographs or printed images. He does not throw a pattern onto an empty surface and wrap it with gestures. It does not abstract, it does not express, it is not about dissolving the mass. He produces whatever he produces during the painting process. He mostly takes a nap, looking for the gaps through which the sensations can escape from that limitless space. Ata does not paint figures, nor body images. At the minimum threshold of being a body; that is, it is always in motion, producing only body-images. They meet each other on the threshold of action, that is, their coming together does not tell the story of a situation or event. There is no pain, sadness, anger, loneliness, all those 'human states'. Not emotions, just sensations, speed, slowness, calmness, explosion... 'Escape lines are, as it were, lines that allow one to escape from the oppressive siege of the infinite and participate in life.

Based on the figure, the artist's paintings are expressionist and colorist from the very beginning. His compositions, in which form was at the forefront, have shifted towards a new expression in which form is almost secondary, with many years of study and experience, but color is an inevitable element. In his paintings, in which he considers the figure as the basic element of an image of active mobility, in line with a technique dominated by broad brush strokes, the dilemma of surface and space is handled within the scope of a visual problematic and resolved with a colorist approach. The artist, whose works are in Ankara, Izmir, Istanbul Painting and Sculpture Museums, as well as in domestic and international private and official collections, continues his life and work in Istanbul and works as a faculty member at Yeditepe University Faculty of Fine Arts.