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Fikret Mualla (1903 - 1967) Click for Artist Information
"Homme et Femme avec un Verre"
The Bar Paintings of Mualla : Bars and Bistros, are one of the most important themes of Fikret Mualla. When he is broke he visits familiar bar and bistros owners and managers and in exchange for a few drinks he gives them paintings, these are places that he frequents, therefore he can reflect the actual environment. He has painted hundreds of bistro paintings, but no bistro painting is a variation of the other. Bars are Fikret Mualla’s first choice to visit when he feels lonely. Fikret has spent each earned penny on alcohol, has never tried drinking at home when it would have been less expensive. The first thing he would do as soon as he has some cash would be to run to the bar, order the most epensive food, drink and buy for others too. This way not only has he socialized but he would escape the problems of his life for a couple of hours. Fikret Mualla defines the difference between the bar counter and the crowd, at the same time, he uses the mutual grounds that interconnect these two realms and brings them to the forfront of the painting. In some examples he shakes the core of the rules of perspective by one look acknowledging the different depths. In some paintings, he spreads the red fov around the place, and at the same time would draw the three dimensional table such as Matisse’s in a single dimension without causing any illusion. The black musicians are actually playing fast music but they are posing in stillness.
Yalın Alpay & Prof Dr.Emre Alkin, “Moualla’nın Sanatı”, Sosyal Yayınları, 2016, Sayfa: 98, 99
Gouche on paper
20 x 26 cm
1954, signed
Provenance: Monique Fischer Collection, Fikret Mualla's close friend and the rightful owner of his works after his death.
The work will be included in the second volume of the Fikret Mualla Catalog Raisonnée, which is currently being prepared by Kerem Topuz and Marc Ottavi.
Estimated Value:180.000TL - 280.000TL
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Fikret Mualla
FİKRET MUALLA (1903 - 1967)
He was born in Istanbul in 1903. He studied at Galatasaray High School. He spent a while in Switzerland, Germany and France to study engineering. In 1930, he changed his mind and returned to Turkey. He organized his first personal exhibition in Istanbul in 1934 and worked as an art teacher for a while. He settled in Paris in 1938. Instead of a regular education, Mualla left himself to the free formation of his instincts. Fikret Mualla, who lived a difficult but productive life in Paris, where he came as a result of a search, managed to attract attention by systematizing a new and original approach to painting in a very modest way - in the context of observations about daily life. Mualla, who breathes the bohemian atmosphere of bars and cafes, especially in the troubled atmosphere of the Second World War, is an important attitude that stands out with its level of expression, composition and color sensitivity within the figure tradition. The series he created with the gouache technique on paper, which is a suitable basis for rapid production, was quick to produce a solution that found its counterpart in the synthesis of Fauvism and Expressionism, integrating with the colorist sensitivity based on the Post-Impressionist heritage and partly on Henri Matisse. At this stage it is official; While determining according to the result of a spontaneous sensitivity's desire to observe and transform; He also tied the pursuit of painting to a problem of existence.
This Paris adventure, which essentially lies in exclusion and inability to hold on to one's own country, seems to have turned into a sad story that lasts until the end of one's life, in pursuit of a closed-circuit relationship that finds meaning only in producing paintings. Contrary to the extravagance and disorder in his life, his paintings reflect an artist's attitude that dominates the subject and style. Paris' entertainment venues, drinking halls, people walking on the streets, and cafes are displayed with colorful expressions in Fikret Mualla's large and small paintings. Fikret Mualla is the first Turkish artist who managed to open the doors of our contemporary art of painting to the Western world with his tragic life and depression and the original-personality structure of his painting and was able to make a name for himself in Western sources. Mualla, whose works are in various international museums and private collections, died in Paris in 1967.
