Nuri Abaç (1926 - 2008) Click for Artist Information

Nuri Abaç

Nuri Abaç (1926 - 2008)

Nuri Abaç was born in Istanbul in 1926. In 1944, he entered the Leopold Levy Workshop at the State Academy of Fine Arts, Department of Painting. A year later, he transferred to the Department of Architecture and graduated in 1950. In 1961, he settled in Ankara. Abaç has come up with a unique "surrealist" style that associates images of everyday life with Anatolian myths and traditional art forms, evoking embroidery-painting and decorative qualities. Developing a textural structure that evokes an architectural formation in the background of the painting, Abaç intends to stage a "humorous situation" with multiple figures and stacking tendencies on this sub-structure. He has realized warm and sympathetic presentations that appropriated the figuration, which we mostly encounter with the visuals presented by the traditional Middle Play and Karagöz, with a typification work. 

Abaç's approach to painting, based on an understanding of architectural structures, is tantamount to a longing for the past, with ironic references that also include social criticism. In his paintings before 1970, he depicted the legendary mythological creatures of Anatolian culture with a fairy tale and surrealist-fantastic style. In his later works, he dealt with historical and contemporary issues and events in the persona of Karagöz and in the simulation of form. He concentrated on all imaginable unique details of the country such as fishermen, bagel sellers, bazaars, taverns, weddings, tea gardens. He was influenced by traditional forms of expression, the formal languages of cultural heritage and reached the universal sense of locality. He died in 2008 in Ankara.