İdil Sanat ve Dil Dergisi
www.idildergisi.com
Cilt 3, Sayı 14  Güz 2014  (ISSN: 2146-9903, E-ISSN: 2147-3056)
Seyfi BAŞKAN

NO Makale Adı
1412892172 THE FIRST CONTACT WITH MODERNITY IN THE TURKISH PAINTING: 1940-1960

Although 1920’s and 1930’s were the most important years of the westernization/innovation process for the Republican period Turkish community, the ‘comparability’ of the developments in this subject with the originated ‘West’, and its expanding to the larger public layers has happened during the period starting in mid-1940’s until 1960. Especially during these years, the connection with the modernism made by the official idealism of the government had the artists gain a feeling of an unprecedented importance, power and a great mission, unlike the impotence feeling the artist had in the later periods of the Republican era. In the art environment of the period which has gained its ‘form’ with the demands of the public authority just like in the 1930’s, the political and ideological burden of the artists for the creation of a ‘modern’ society have become important and great. Although the pictographic excitement and aesthetic creation levels have been under the art environment or artist’s general artistic level because of the plain expressivity burdened by these paintings which have their message part outweighs; because of various reasons, in these periods an important part of the artists have fulfilled their job as witnessing the history by reflecting the social – political and cultural aura of their period in their paintings. But beside this, they have made the first experiments of the ‘new trends’ enabled by the abstract painting, without excluding the figurative painting. With this concept the years of 1940-1960 have also become a period in which the ‘modernism’ has been interpreted without being ‘quotation’. The conditions and principles of the modern Turkish art environment, which is in an effort to exceed the very aspirated, style boundaries of the present day, are also had been grounded in the intellectual environment of the years between 1940-1960.
Keywords: Turkish Art, Turkish Painting Art, Turkish Modernism.