Erol Akyavas

Private Collection, New York (acquired directly from the artist)

Colour: The colours in the catalogue are fairly accurate. Condition: This work is in very good condition. There is minor wear to the four corners and slight paint loss to the extreme left corner. There are very faint rubbing marks along the top right edges . There is a small glue mark on lower right edge. No restoration is apparent under close inspection with the ultra violet light.
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In this work Erol Akyavas explores another recurrent theme of his ouevre. Drawn to the taboo, Akyavas confronted sex and sexuality in his paintings in varying ways throughout his career. In line with the overtly sexual art of 1960s America, such as Tom Wesselmann's Great Nudes series, Akyavas' representations at this time were also either explicit or debauched, and sometimes clinical.  In his later life however, the representation of sex and sexuality was placed within the gentler framework of his mystic Sufi approach to life and the cosmos.

According to Jale Erzen in his essay on Erol Akyavas; "Sex has three faces: it may be personal; at the extreme limit of the personal it becomes universal; and in its connection to the origin of life it can be cosmic. With Akyavas we see an interweaving of the three." (Ilona Akyavas et al, Ed., Erol Akyavas, Istanbul 2007, p. 32). In this painting dating to 1980, these three factors are immediately apparent.

By delinating the figures with white dots, and placing the figures on a vivid carpet of cobalt, indigo, pink and green, Akyavas suggests a celestial map. Here this private moment transforms into cosmic significance both aesthetically, in its representation, and metaphorically. Here the kiss appears as much a transfer of love as it is of life and breath, with the figures conjoined by a flame redolent of passion and fertility.  

In this work with its exquisite balance of colour and form, Erol Akyavas pays tribute to life and love in his own unique, and touchingly philosophical way.