ZEKİ FAİK İZER - Turkish Painting Association

Who is Zeki Faik İzer?
(15 April 1905 Istanbul – 12 December 1988)

He completed his primary education at Beykoz Ahmet Mithat Efendi School. He received his first painting education from Agah Efendi during primary school. He started writing poetry at the age of 13. His poems were published in Insan and Akbaba magazines. In 1923, he entered Sanayi-i Nefise Mektebi Alisi (today’s Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University). He first became a student of Hikmet Onat and then İbrahim Çallı.
He graduated from school in 1928 as the top student and went to Paris, where he broadened his horizons by following the general art environment, museums, exhibitions and art-related publications, as well as the education he received in the workshops of Andre Lhote and Othon Friesz. The artist, who returned home in 1932 after three years in Paris, was appointed as an art teacher at Ankara Gazi Education Institute (Gazi Muallim School and Education Institute).
During this period, with the urge to share their art with the society with his young artist friends who had finished their education and returned from abroad, he met with Nurullah Berk, Elif Naci, Cemal Tollu, Abidin Dino and sculptor Zühtü Müridoğlu in his house on the fifth floor of the building in Cihangir, Istanbul, which was then called Yavuz Apartment. laid the foundation.

This union of artists, which is still being discussed in terms of Turkish painting, opened its first exhibition consisting of charcoal drawings, which they described as the “Alphabet of Painting”, on October 8, 1933, in an empty store in Narmanlı Yurdu, Beyoğlu, Istanbul. Zeki Faik İzer, who both continued his work within the D Group and concentrated on a work expressing the Principles and Revolutions of the Republic for the “Revolution Exhibition” that coincided with the tenth anniversary of the Republic in 1933, visited Tiziano in Paris for the second time in 1934. While making copies from old masters such as Vecellio, Paolo Veronese and Poussin, he also had the opportunity to examine new art movements.

When he returned home in 1936, he became the head of the "Photography Workshop" established in the "Academy". He worked as a photography and poster teacher. He participated in the exhibition held by D Group in the Academy halls in 1939. He went to Eskişehir as part of the "Homeland Tours" organized through Community Centers. II. With the outbreak of World War II, he was drafted into the army for the second time.
He received the first prize in the 4th State Painting and Sculpture Exhibitions, the first of which was held in 1939. He opened his first personal exhibition in 1945, for which the invitation text was written by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar. While he was serving as the Director of the Istanbul State Academy of Fine Arts between 1948 and 1952, he opened his second personal exhibition at the French Consulate in Istanbul. This exhibition also became an expression of his break from Group D.
He started abstract painting late, not by following art movements, but because he tried to do what suited his own nature. He started producing nonfigurative works in the 1950s. He retired in 1968.
The artist, who received the Osman Hamdi Bey Honorary Award in 1983 for the 100th anniversary of the Academy, died in 1988.