Zekai Ormancı (1949 - 2008) Click for Artist Information

Zekai Ormancı

Zekai Ormancı (1949 - 2008)

He was born in Aydın in 1949. He graduated from Istanbul State Academy of Fine Arts (now known as Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University) Özdemir Altan Workshop. Zekai Ormancı, who worked in the Zeki Faik İzer Workshop for about a year at the Academy, became Özdemir Altan's student after İzer retired in 1969-70. After his first years as a student, Ormancı came second in the student exhibition held in Ankara in 1973, when he was in the last year of the Academy. In 1980, he studied with Albert Bitran at the International Salzburg Summer Academy, which he attended with a scholarship from the Austrian Government. Upon his return to Turkey, he was appointed as a lecturer at the Istanbul State Academy of Fine Arts, Department of Painting, now known as Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University. In the same year, he founded the carpet-painting (tapisserie) workshop. The artist, who received the title of associate professor in 1986, became a professor in 1995.

In 1990, when his project for a carpet painting for the Presidential Mansion Hall of Honor was accepted, he created a 340 x 900 cm. He completed the approximately 30 m² carpet painting in 9 months, with the contributions of his student, painter Harun Acı, in an intense work tempo. The work still hangs in the Presidential Mansion. In 1993, he was invited to represent Turkey in the International 'Texliles Mediterranees' exhibition organized by ARTIFEX, headquartered in Paris. He participated in the exhibition held in Gruissan, Narbonne, France, with the participation of many famous artists from Mediterranean Countries, with two carpet paintings.

The artist, who worked as a lecturer at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Faculty of Fine Arts for many years, focused on transferring the pattern and color compositions in his paintings to carpet arrangements, and in those years, his works based on decoupage of dense object pieces and the aesthetics of composition in contradictory positions, illusion with reality, objective shaping. The artist, whose works are in various museums and collections at home and abroad, passed away in Istanbul in 2008, leaving behind hundreds of works.