Saim Özeren

Who is Saim Özeren? (1900-1964)

He was born in Istanbul in 1900. While he was studying at the Painting Department of the Istanbul State Academy of Fine Arts in the 1930s, he worked in the workshops of Çallı and Tanpınar and gained the admiration of his teachers. He was among the leading names of the first generation of painters after the Republic, and one of his works exhibited in Galatasaray exhibitions was acquired by the Painting and Sculpture Museum, which was established in 1937.
Saim Özeren, who graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in 1926, continued in the İbrahim Çallı workshop and his works were exhibited in the New Painting Society Exhibition, which was organized by young painters in 1924.
Painter Özeren worked as a teacher in Erzurum, Trabzon and Istanbul.
Atatürk portraits of Özeren, who participated in the Fine Arts Union, Independent Painters and Sculptors Union, and State Painting and Sculpture exhibitions, were printed on PTT stamps.

After the 1940s, as he retreated into his own corner, resentful of the art circles, his paintings were forgotten for a long time, but in 1986, his paintings, most of which were unsigned, were exhibited en masse in Istanbul after a long period of silence.
Saim Özeren’s works, which focus on the landscape genre, reveal a superior technical understanding, a deep-rooted knowledge of color and a line of taste that goes beyond impressionism. The artist died in Istanbul in 1964.