[1] Fikret Mualla (Istanbul 1903- Reillane 1967)

A Turkish painter who produced enthusiastically lyrical and sincere works uniting the stylistic features of Expressionism and Fauvism.

Fikret Mualla Saygı was born in Istanbul and died in Nice, France on July 20, 1967. He was lame as the result of a childhood accident. That and his father’s subsequent remarriage following the death of his mother contributed to his difficult and maladjusted character as a child. Following education at Saint Joseph, a school of French origin, he attended Galatasaray High School for a certain period, but was sent to Germany to study engineering even before graduating. He travelled around Germany, went to Switzerland and Italy and visited museums in those countries. Once he realised his artistic ability, Mualla gained a sound knowledge of design within a short period of time. He made successful paintings, fashion drawings and engravings. His designs were accepted by the most famous German magazines. When his father began to experience financial difficulties and was unable to send him money any more, he stayed in Germany until the age of twenty-five, supported by an Egyptian prince.

Mualla was treated for alcohol problems in a hospital for a short period in 1929. Later on, he moved from Germany to France, living in artistic areas of Paris, such as Montparnasse and Saint Germain. He met Hale Asaf at the Andre Lhote studio. After painting in Paris, Mualla returned to Turkey due to financial difficulties. In order to secure an income he applied to the Ministry of Education and was appointed as a painting teacher at the Ayvalık Secondary School in 1934. However, he resigned from the post shortly afterwards. He designed costumes for operettas, such as Lüküs Hayat, Deli Dolu and Saz Caz, and illustrated the book of verse Varan 3 by Nazım Hikmet. He prepared designs for the journal Yeni Adam published by İsmail Hakkı Baltacıoğlu. For a year in 1936, he was placed into care at the Bakırköy Mental Hospital on the order of th public prosecutor due to some statements he had made, which were misinterpreted. He was discharged from the hospital towards the end of 1937. Following that experience, Fikret Mualla had an increasing phobia regarding the police that continued until his death.

Believing that he could survive in Paris with his share of a legacy from his father, he left Turkey in 1939. During the two years between his discharge from hospital and the time he left Turkey, he painted approximately 30 pictures of Istanbul for the 1939 International New York Fair Turkish pavilion at the request of Abidin Dino. A lawsuit was filed against him after he left Turkey, on the grounds that one of the designs he drew for Ses magazine published in 1938 was obscene, but he was acquitted in 1939. He published two short stories, “Masal” and “Üsera Karargahı,” in Ses magazine during that period.

Fikret Mualla lived in France for over 26 years. Due to long years of financial difficulties, excessive addiction to alcohol, and his continual police phobia, he experienced increasing instability. He was again hospitalized for treatment. Throughout this two-month stay in hospital he was under the protection of Dina Vierny, for whom he produced paintings. With those he held his first exhibition in November 1954. He was hospitalized at a mental institution subsequent to his second exhibition. When he was discharged one month later, he made an agreement with an industrialist called Lharmin and moved to the ‘Rive Droite’ of the River Seine, where wealthier people lived. During this period, he met Madame Anglés, who was a regular buyer of his paintings. Subsequently, Madame Anglés took Fikret Mualla under her protection and put him in a hospital when he had a stroke in 1962 and took care of him. Then, she settled him in her house located in the Reillane region of Nice and covered all his expenses. Mualla remained paralyzed until the end of his life. His nervous depressions started again in May 1967. He was first placed in a hospital and then in a care home where he would stay until his death. He was buried in a paupers’ cemetery, just like the painter Hale Asaf. At the initiative of President Fahri Korutürk, his body was brought back to Turkey and buried in the Karacaahmet Cemetery in 1974, seven years after his death. In 1976 an exhibition was organized in Ankara in his name with 118 paintings donated by friends, relatives and various collections. Today most of his works are in private collections.

Having lived most of his life in France, Fikret Mualla selected his themes from among the details of Paris life, such as cafes, circuses and the streets. For him painting was a way of life. He sincerely translated the facts of life into colours and form and painted the members of the Bohemian circle in which he lived. He mostly used gouache technique and worked very fast with it. However, he was as professional and skilled with oils as he was with watercolour and gouache. Theoretical painting problems were not a particularly significant consideration for him. He was untouched by external influences and did not join in contemporary trends. He painted in the way he felt, subjectively and full of enthusiastic lyricism.

Works (main): Painting: Oturan Adamlar (Sitting Men), 1937, Istanbul Museum of Paintings and Sculptures; Sevişenler (People Making Love), 1952; Masada (At the Table),1953; Nature-Morte, 1954; Sokak (Street), 1955; Sermayeler (Working Girls), 1955; Kafe (Café), 1955, Bistro; Kanalda Bekleyen Taşıt Botları (Passenger Boats Waiting at the Canal); Marsilya’da Fransız İşçileri bir Kahvede (French Workers at a Café in Marseille); Haliç ve Süleymaniye (The Golden Horn and Süleymaniye Mosque); Paris’te bir Sokak (A Street in Paris); Amerikan Bar (American Bar); Baloncu (Balloon-Seller); Peysaj (Landscape); Balıkçı (Fisherman); Mor Zemin Üstünde Figürler (Figures on Purple Background); Illustration: Nazım Hikmet, Varan 3, 1930. Theatre Costumes: Lüküs Hayat, Deli Dolu, Saz Caz.

This large gouache drawing is a splendid example of Fikret Mualla’s vibrant, painterly style. The subject of barges on the Seine or the Marne rivers was a particular favourite of the artist, and appears in several gouaches, most of which are today in private collections.

Source: http://www.kultur.gov.tr/EN/FİKRET MUALLA

One of modern Turkish painting’s most interesting and important artists, Fikret Muallâ was born in Istanbul in 1903. His father was Mehmet Ekrem Bey, second director of the Public Debt Commission, which was set up for paying off Ottoman debts to Europe; his mother Emine Nevber Hanim. The years 1910-1915 at Kalamis-Moda, a fashionable quarter on the city’s Asian Marmara shore, were a period of ‘childhood bliss’, until a soccer injury at age 12 left him with a slight limp for the rest of his life. He was sent first to Saint-Joseph and later to the famed Galatasaray Lycée, both of which gave instruction in French. Recovering at age 15 from the Spanish flu, which he caught at school during the great epidemic of 1918, he nevertheless passed the disease on to his mother, who died of it. Her death was the first in a chain of events that would affect his entire life. Muallâ, who became completely uncontrollable after his father’s second marriage, was sent first to Switzerland to study. From there he went to Germany, where he graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin. The city’s bohemian lifestyle was his introduction to modern art and its leading exponents and, inevitably, to alcohol. Upon his return to Turkey, with the help of friends Muallâ became a painting teacher at his former alma mater, Galatasaray Lycée, but was soon dismissed for ‘behavior unbecoming to a teacher’. After a brief teaching stint in Ayvalik on the Aegean coast, he returned again to Istanbul, this time making a living by writing for newspapers and magazines and making sketches. In 1934 he held his first one-man show in Beyoglu, but it aroused little interest. His weakness for alcohol had finally become an addiction from which he would never recover. Creating scenes in restaurants and bars, he ended up at a police station following one such incident and was committed by his fellow-journalists to the Mental Hospital at Bakirkoy-Istanbul. His roommate there was another famous artist, musician Neyzen Tevfik, of whom he would later say, “if I have a little knowledge of and taste in literature, I owe it to him."

Returning once again to Istanbul’s bohemian scene, Fikret Muallâ painted the city at the request of Abidin Dino, who was in charge of the Turkish Pavilion at the World Exposition in New York. It was, in a sense, Muallâ’s farewell to the city. According to some with the money he was paid for the paintings, according to others with an inheritance left from his father’s death, he left for France in 1939. In France, where he would spend 29 years of his life and get into trouble numerous times for his quick temper and addiction to alcohol, and in whose mental hospitals he would languish as he had in Istanbul, It was the Parisians who provided the inspiration for his work. In Paris he studied at the studio of Othon Friesz in the Grand Chaumière Academie, where he made the acquaintance of many an up-and-coming artist, most notably Picasso. “Although he rubbed shoulders with such greats as Picasso, Matisse, Signac, Ziem, Dali, Chagall, Dufy, Van Dongen and Pisarro, he never imitated anyone in his painting,” says his close friend Taha Toros, adding, “Through the types he created and his works, which were at times witty, at times provocative, he was a true Parisian painter."

Another acquaintance from his Paris days was Bedri Rahmi Eyuboglu, who describes the artist’s outlook on life as follows: “Imagine an artist responsible for nothing but painting pictures whenever the impulse takes him. An artist who is prepared to go hungry and thirsty three days a week; who picks up cigarette butts from the street as if gathering berries in the countryside. An artist who, the moment he manages to sell a few pictures with the help of friends and acquaintances, gets drunk on the hardest liquor, eats the most expensive food, and rages at those around him, flinging the most outrageous insults.” As Dr. Safder Tarim puts it, painting for Muallâ was synonymous with life, with breathing. He painted with great speed, fusing time past and present as he translated the people of his own world onto paper. When he was unable to find paper during the Nazi occupation of Paris, he stealthily ripped posters off walls and used the blank portions for his gouaches, which he gave to waiters in return for food and drink. Meanwhile gallery owners and collectors, knowing full well that he would eventually earn fame, snapped up his paintings for a song. But Muallâ’s dissolute life in no way affected his art. His style was improvisational. Nudes, still lifes, landscapes, Paris streets, marketplaces, cafés, bars, bistros, jazz musicians, card players, balloon men, children, animals, the circus, hookers... In the words of Youki Desnos, Fikret Muallâ’s are “colors that evoke dreams and confer meaning”.

In 1959 Fikret Muallâ paid several visits to southern France, where he came under the patronage of a certain Mme. Angles, who bought his paintings during this period. It was again Mme. Angles who extended a helping hand when he suffered a brain hemorrhage at the end of 1962, installing him in her home at Reillanne, a small village in the Southern Alps. Continuing to paint, albeit without the old enthusiasm, Fikret Muallâ seemed to sum up his life in a letter he wrote from there: “In my opinion every artist should suffer hardship, anguish and hunger. Only after that should they enjoy life. After the age of fifty, people start to seek comfort and health, and to think. That is my fate. My life has passed in a struggle against poverty. Now in this quiet village I submit to living peacefully by myself waiting for the final period of my life as ordained by God. Apart from this I have no problems! No pretensions. We have seen every kind of circumstance the world has to offer, we have tasted very few of the pleasures of life. Today what is left but for my tongue to recall the past and my brush to paint?” Fikret Muallâ died towards morning on 26 July 1967 in a home for the indigent in the neighboring town of Mane. He was 64 years old. In 1974 his remains were brought to Turkey at the behest of the then-President of the Republic, Fahri Korutürk, and buried at Istanbul’s Karacaahmet Cemetery.

Reference: Bahar Kalkan/SKYLIFE

FİKRET MUALLA ANLATIYOR | ÜSERA KARARGAHI

“Ah şu insanlar ne tuhaftırlar? Hayat kazanmak, hayat kazandırmak için ne garip tecellilerle mücadele ederler.

Gözlerimizi tahriş ederek burnumuza kadar sokulup kulaklarımızı pisletecek derecede, ellerindeki eşyayı satmak için bağıran satıcılarla, sabahleyin saat sekizi zor bekleyip caddelerde, sokaklarda, pencerelerin içine doğru, apdesthaneye çıkar gibi garip garip sedalarla yestehliyen eskici ve sebzevatçı feryatlarına mı, yoksa köyünden kalkıp pis kıyafetiyle, İstanbul’un kapısında kimse kendisine ‘Hey ağam nereye gidiyorsun?’ diye sormadığından, şehirde artan işsiz serserilerle, bunlara ilave olarak hiç bir lisana benzemeyen Rum, Ermeni, Yahudi lisanlarından doğan ‘tonalite’ lere mi, yoksa bu gayrı mesul ve hilkaten hacir altındaki şehir sokaklarında dolaşan nasırlanmış ruhlarına mı kızıp yaradana sığınayım de ‘aman beni kurtarın!’ diyeyim?

Ben hürriyetimi çok severim. Bunu naçiz sükutunda bulurum. Resim yaparken, ibadet eder gibi sükuneti beynimin tepesinde, saçlarımın dibinde hissedemezsem, o zaman bilirim ki bir yanlış işle meşgulum veya işgal edilmişimdir. Bu yanlış meşguliyetten kurtulmak için gider, evvela üç beş kadeh rakı içerim. Eğer bu yanlış meşguliyet daha sürerse, fitil gibi olur, çatacak, kavga edecek adam ararım.

Herkes aşağı yukarı benim gibidir.

Fikret Mualla 19, A la Coupole, 1957Alemi nizama sokmak, fikrimden geçen şey değilse de, lafın kısası , sükutumu resmen severim ve dediğim gibi, ibadet eder gibi resim yapmayı ister, ruhi istirahatimi ancak bu tarzda temin ederim. Bu da benim hakkımdır. Bu sırada bana neler söylemezler.:

“- İşte zavallı yine resim yapıyor. Para kazanacağı yerde boyalarla, fırçalarla uğraşıyor, sonra ekmek parası bulamıyor!”

Doğru, bu bezirganların hakları var. Resim yapmak, resim yaptırmak zengin cemiyetlerin lüksüdür ve ben leblebiciler arasında bir ucubeyim. Ben bu kitle içinde onlarca bir deliyim. Nitekim bence de, beni resim yapmaktan uzak tutan herhangi bir kimse de benim düşmanımdır ve ben de ruhen fakir bir cemiyetin ve tufeyli zenginliğinin müthiş düşmanıyım.

Benim gibi düşünenler de yok değil. Onlarla buluşunca rahatım. Fakir fakat bahtiyarım. Fakat onlardan ayrılınca yalnız kalıyorum. Düşenin pek dostu yoktur Leblebistanda.

Fikret Mualla natürmort 1956Son seneler, geçen günlerim hep böyle resim yapmaktan uzak geçiyor. Naçiz benliğim kepaze oluyor. Kafam orospu çanağına dönüyor.Pek nadirden de felekten bir gün çalıp, kendimi İstanbul’ un bedesteninde, çarşısında, cami avlularında ve Eyüp mezarlıklarında bulup resim yapınca, o zaman çocukluğum canlanıyor, benliğim yerine geliyor. Ruhi banyo almış gibi rahat, sakin bir hal alıyorum. Fakat bu, çok sürmüyor. Akşam oldu mu kandimi, herhangi bir tellal vasıtasıyla kiralanmış adi bir odada, kiracılarından yaşayan adi bir evsahibeinin kira odasında bulunca, tekrar kirleniyorum. Ve pislikten nefret ediyorum. Bu pisliklerin bıraktığı ruhi esaret, izzeti nefsimi kırıyor, nefret ediyorum. Tellallarından, odalardan geçinen mahluklardan ve kendimden... Evet. Bu tarz bir cemiyette, bu zihniyette bir kitle arasında en temiz iş, şüphesiz ki bir yerde oturmamaktır. Fakat o zaman ad zülfüyare dokunur hadiseler peyda oluyor. İnsana serseri diyorlar.

Fikret Mualla 20, Çiçekli BarNe ise, lafın kısası, geçen gün felekten bir gün aşırmıştım. Koltuğumda resim cildbendi ve suluboyam, şöyle pürneşe, kendimi Nuruosmaniye camiinin avlusunda buldum. Bir kalabalık vardı. Durakaldım. Bir adam bir kartalı sağ ayağından bağlamış, bir kuruş mukabilinde niyet çektiriyordu. Her niyetten sonra da kuşa ufacık bir ekmek parçası veriyordu. Kartal şüphesiz insan gibi ekmek yemezdi. Bunu çocuklar bile bilir. Fakat herhangi bir yerde nasılsa bu asil mahluk, bu adamın eline geçip sağ ayağını bağlatmıştı. Ve gagasıyla niyet çekmesini öğrenmişti. Efendisinden ekmek yemeyi de öğrendikten sonra, asaletini kaybetmişti.

Bu kartal muazzam bir mahluktu. Herhalde çok açtı. Hem çok aç bırakılmıştı bu esarette ki, gelen geçen, kuruşu atınca niyeti çekiyordu. Efendisi de hemen önüne bir ekmek parçası veriyor, lokma daha düşmeden, soluğu kartalın kursağında buluyordu.

Muazzam ve şahane bir mahluktu bu kartal. Doğrusu onun hürriyetini çalmaya kıyamazdım. Ne güzel bir profili vardı. Çatık kaşlarının altındaki gözler:

- “Ben efendiyim, ben bu pespayelerin baziçesi (oyuncağı) olamam, ben insanların erişemeyeceği dağların üstündeki bulutların da üstünden uçmaya alışmış bir mahlukum” diyordu.

Gelen geçen çocuklar, elleriyle onun kuyruğuna dokunuyorlar, mahluku esaretinde bile rahat bırakmıyorlardı. Bu aralık bir polis, evine bir paket et almış, dönüyordu. Manzara karşısında durdu. Paketi açtı, içinden aldığı bir et parçasını kartala verdi. Kartal bu et parçasıyla biraz canlandı. Ve niyet için atılan kuruşlara bile bakmadı bir müddet. Niyetçi polise döndü!

“- Çok et yer bu mahluk!” dedi.

“- Hakkıdır, bu onun gıdasıdır!” dedim içimden. “Gıdadır,”dedim. Yine içimden tabii! Eğer hürriyetini elde edebilse, o da diğer kendi cinsinden efendilerin yanına dönecekti. Bu zabunkeşlik nümunesi leblebicilerin emri altında, bu üsera karargahında, bir lokma ekmeğe bağlanıp kırtasiyecilik yapmayacaktı. Bir kartal gibi, ömrünü sürecekti.

He returned to Istanbul in 1923. He first started working for the Tanin newspaper. He wrote for many newspapers such as Vakit, Akşam (French), Milliyet, Cumhuriyet, Son Posta, Politics, İkdam, Son Telegraf, Ulus, Zafer, Yeni İstanbul, Son Havadis. While writing, he also worked as a civil servant at Anadolu Agency between 1930 and 1936, and at Türkiye İş Bankası between 1937 and 1966. He retired from İşbank in 1966.

The first article written by Fikret Adil for magazines was published in Şebab. His art articles were also published in magazines such as Movement, Yeni Adam, Agac, Aydede, Yeditepe, Akis and Meydan. The author also published a weekly art magazine called Artist in 1931 and an art, literature and sociology magazine called S.E.S in 1939.

He translated more than ten plays staged by Ankara State Theater and Ankara City Theatre.
Adil fell ill in 1973 and went to Zurich for treatment. He died in this city and was buried in Eyüpsultan.