Cemal Bingöl (1912 - 1993) Click for Artist Information

Cemal Bingöl

Cemal Bingöl (1912 - 1993)

Turkish painter Cemal Bingöl was born in Erzurum in 1912. After graduating from Ankara Gazi Education Institute, Department of Painting, the artist worked as a teacher in secondary schools and especially made studies on children's paintings at that time. In 1945, he went to Yozgat, participating in state-organized country trips. He returned from this region with different compositions. He opened his first personal exhibitions in Ankara and Erzurum in 1947. Two years later, he went to Paris and worked for a while with André Lhote. While he was an art teacher at Yozgat Secondary School, he had an exhibition compiled from the painting works of the students of this school exhibited in London in 1943. After the exhibition was met with interest and received positive criticism in the London press, he focused on theoretical studies on children's paintings.

After the 1950s, he decided on a geometric non-figurative tendency, dividing the surface of the canvas with large and flat color patches and geometric shapes, mostly consisting of rectangles and squares. This abstract trend started in contemporary Turkish painting with artists such as Zeki Faik İzer, Sabri Berkel, Nejat Devrim, Selim Turan, Adnan Turani. It can be said that Cemal Bingöl, who is among these names, gravitated towards pure schematism and a simple color and form order. This understanding can be summarized as reducing art to its basic elements, eliminating details and developing a sense of rhythm that finds its meaning in simplicity. Generally, the effect of flat and geometric surfaces that complement each other with vertical and horizontal lines is prioritized. Cemal Bingöl's art, which can also be attributed to Mondrian's abstract-geometric compositions or Kazimir Malevich's "suprematist" solutions, is the product of a determined evolution from the figurative to the abstract during its formation process.

He won the second prize at the 26th State Painting and Sculpture Exhibition opened in 1965, and the first prize at the 50th State Painting and Sculpture Exhibition in 1989. Cemal Bingöl's paintings are in the Istanbul and Ankara Painting and Sculpture Museums, the Ankara National Library collection and some private collections. The artist passed away in 1993.