Arif Bedii Kaptan
Houses with Red Roofs
1957
- Medium
- Oil on hardboard
- Dimensions
- 13 × 18 cm
- Viewing
- At the showroom — by appointment
A small-format country scene: at the left a white house with a red roof and blue-framed windows, at the right a second building, and between them a tree rising on its trunk. Across a surface where green, ochre and terracotta are laid in free patches, the forms are reduced to their essential contours and nature is summarised in a limited number of touches of colour. The signature "A. Kaptan" is legible at the lower right; the work is dated 1957.
About the Artist
Arif Bedii Kaptan (1906, Istanbul – 1979) was one of the pioneering figures in Turkish painting's turn towards abstraction. After graduating from the Naval Academy on Heybeliada as a mechanical engineer in 1924, he devoted himself to painting; private lessons with Nazmi Ziya Güran shaped his early impressionist landscapes, while his years working alongside Ali Avni Çelebi drew him towards a more constructive approach. He held his first solo exhibition in 1935 in the halls of the Academy of Fine Arts, took part in the exhibitions of the Society of Fine Arts and of the d Group, and received third prize at the 1st State Painting and Sculpture Exhibition in 1939. Between 1947 and 1949 he worked in André Lhote's studio in Paris; returning to the city in 1957, he remained there until 1962, producing lyrical abstract works and becoming one of the first representatives of that idiom in Turkey. His works are held in the collection of the Ankara State Museum of Painting and Sculpture; he also wrote for the press of his day and published two books, on Claude Monet and on Delacroix.
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