Turgut Zaim (1906 - 1974) Click for Artist Information

Turgut Zaim

TURGUT ZAİM (1906 - 1974)

He was born in Istanbul in 1906. He worked at the Fine Arts Academy and İbrahim Çallı Workshop. However, since it was incompatible with the school's educational rules, he turned his attention to other fields that would help his academic career: traditional Turkish art, Far Eastern, Chinese and Japanese art. He graduated from the Istanbul Academy of Fine Arts (1930) and improved his art in Paris.

When Turgut Zaim returned to Turkey, he worked as a teacher and a decorator at the General Directorate of State Theatres. Turgut Zaim's painting, with its new and comprehensive content and its understanding of form, constitutes a counter-option to the developments in parallel with Western movements and tendencies in our recent painting art. Anatolian reality gains a cute and optimistic popularity in his painting. Folkloric elements come to the fore, local concerns are presented within a poetic expression framework.

Zaim, who participated in the exhibitions of the Independent Painters and Sculptors Association and D Group, also received first and second prizes in many competitions he participated in. The artist passed away in Ankara in 1974.