Artists
Artists in the Collection
Jean Pierre Drouin
Drouin's manner is distinguished by a fine, tightly stippled line, precisely rendered flesh tones, and delicate highlights heightened in white gouache.
Jean-Pierre Drouin (Besançon 1782 – Besançon 1861) was a French painter celebrated for his portrait miniatures and watercolours. Trained at the school of the Académie in Paris under the sculptor Dejoux, he then studied miniature painting with Jean-Baptiste Jacques Augustin, the foremost miniaturist of the age, establishing himself as a miniature painter at the Palais Royal in Paris from 1816. His work is represented in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Besançon and the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille, and he is recorded in E. Bénézit's dictionary of artists.
- ·Represented in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Besançon (independently confirmed; the artist's widow donated works to the museum in 1872)
- ·Represented in the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Lille
- ·Listed in E. Bénézit's dictionary of artists (Vol. 3, p. 679 — per certificate)
Devrim Erbil
A poetic idiom that reconstructs the panorama of Istanbul through rhythmic, linear abstraction
Devrim Erbil (b. 1937, Uşak) is one of the pioneering figures of contemporary Turkish painting. He graduated from the Painting Department of the İstanbul State Academy of Fine Arts in 1959, having trained under Halil Dikmen and Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu, and went on to serve at the Academy for many years as both teacher and administrator. His urban panoramas, which interpret Istanbul through a rhythmic, linear abstraction, remain the most celebrated theme of his art. Named a State Artist in 1991, Erbil is represented in Turkey's foremost museum collections.
- ·State Artist title (1991) and the Presidential Grand Prize for Culture and the Arts (2019)
- ·Works held in the collections of the Painting and Sculpture Museums of Ankara, Istanbul and İzmir
- ·The Devrim Erbil Museum of Contemporary Art opened in his name in Balıkesir in 2004
Şükrü Aslan
A figurative idiom that weaves its subjects from coiled layers recalling flowing hair and skeins of thread
Born in Gaziantep in 1986, Şükrü Aslan graduated in 2012 from the Sculpture Department of the Art Education programme at Çukurova University. His practice addresses the alienation of the individual through a social-realist lens: weaving his figures from coiled textures reminiscent of accumulations of wire and thread, he renders visible the intricate inner world of the individual. Exhibiting in cities across Turkey since 2010, Aslan was among the artists selected for the 39th Akbank Contemporary Artists Prize Exhibition in 2021.
- ·39th Akbank Contemporary Artists Prize Exhibition (Akbank Sanat, Istanbul, 2021)
Bayram Gümüş
A naïve idiom rendering trains, nature and scenes of everyday life with meticulous, finely wrought detail
Born in Konya in 1960, Bayram Gümüş moved with his family to Istanbul in 1967. A meeting with the painter Kasım Koçak in 1983 gave new direction to his practice; the following year he opened his own studio and began to earn his living as a painter. One of the leading representatives of Turkish naïve painting, he brings the joy of living and the delight of the everyday to canvas with a wholly distinctive sense of colour. He held his first solo exhibition in Ankara in 1985 and has since exhibited widely in Turkey and the United States.
- ·Fourteen solo exhibitions in Turkey and California since 1985
- ·More than 25 appearances at the TÜYAP Art Fair (1994–2019)
Bubi
An abstract language that weaves fabric cords and rolled canvases into cage-like structures, carrying painting into three dimensions
Born in Istanbul in 1956, Bubi (David Hayon) studied psychology and anthropology at Istanbul University before turning to painting as a self-taught artist. He is known for his "Cage" structures, in which painted cords of fabric and rolled canvases are interlaced into horizontal and vertical weaves — works that carry the traditional canvas into relief and into the three-dimensional object, constituting an entirely original language. The artist lives and works in Istanbul.
- ·The "Cages" series: woven structures extending the limits of painting into three dimensions
- ·General curator of the 1st Istanbul Art Fair (1991)
- ·"The Bubi Periods", a comprehensive retrospective (Istanbul, 2016)
Alea Pınar Du Pre
Mixed-media pop portraits in a "media fusion" technique that blends digital art with traditional painting
Alea Pınar Du Pre (b. 1972, Vienna) is an Austrian-Turkish contemporary artist who lives and works between Amsterdam and Istanbul. Through a signature technique she calls "media fusion", uniting digital art with traditional media such as oil and acrylic, she produces mixed-media portraits constructed layer by layer; her work interrogates the boundary between visible reality and the virtual. Since 2008 her work has been exhibited internationally, including in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Austria, Turkey, Singapore, Hong Kong and Dubai.
- ·Works held in the collections of Sabancı Holding, Koç Holding, Ferko Holding, Odeabank and ICBC Bank
- ·Originator of the "media fusion" technique
Burcu Yavuz
A contemporary idiom uniting void, depth and movement in three-dimensional figurative arrangements on canvas
Burcu Yavuz (b. 1979, Karabük) is a contemporary Turkish artist who graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts at Marmara University in 2001. Shaped by metaphysical inquiry and the unknowability of the universe, her practice brings void, depth and movement to the canvas through three-dimensional arrangements, notably in her "Purgatory", "Frequency" and "Cycle" series. She has taken part in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Turkey and abroad, and lives and works in Bodrum.
- ·Two works held in the collection of a contemporary art museum in Qatar
- ·Known for the "Purgatory", "Frequency" and "Cycle" series
