Erol Akyavas

Collection of the Artist
Gifted by the artist to the present owner in the 1960s

Cleveland, Cleveland Museum of Art, May Show, 1955

Beral Madra and Haldun Dostoglu, Erol Akyavas: His Life and Works, Istanbul, 2000, p. 175, illustrated in colour
Ilona Akyavas, Jale Erzen and Zeynep Inankur, Erol Akyavas, Istanbul, 2007, p. 69, illustrated in colour
Exhib. Cat.; Istanbul, Istanbul Modern, Erol Akyavas – Retrospective, 29 May – 25 August 2013, p. 39, illustrated in colour 

This work is in good condition. Some pin hole size chips to the center right, center left, upper right corner and alongside the lower and right edge of the board. A 3cm diagonal chip to the bottom left corner edge of the board. Some very faint craquelure across the green areas of the painting with a minute cracking on the top right corner edge. Some surface irregularities and varnish remains across the painting, inherent to the artist choice of medium and working process. Colours: The colours in the catalogue illustration are not accurate, with the overall hues are much softer in the original work. The greens tending towards a darker emerald green, the reds and whites are closer to a grey brown hue. The blues are closer to a stone coloured blue.
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Born in Istanbul in 1932, Akyavas began his formal arts training in 1950 as a visiting student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Istanbul, Turkey under the prominent artist, poet and intellectual Bedri Rahmi Eyuboglu. Following this largely Cubist education in painting, he then took courses at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence and later in Paris under André Lhôte and Fernand Léger before making the life changing decision to move to the United States – the unquestionable centre of new and emerging artistic styles and movements. However, instead of studying painting again, Akyavas enrolled to the prestigious Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago in 1954 to study architecture under the revolutionary Mies van der Rohe who historically set a new aesthetic standard for modern architecture. After graduation, Akyavas would take up various positions at well known architectural offices including Eero Saarinen’s.

Arriving into this new Western world that was significantly different than what he experienced in his home country or Europe, Akyavas practiced painting in the styles of Tachism and Abstract Expressionism which were prominent during the period and which also formed his core education in Turkey and in Europe. As Zeynep Inankur explains, “Though the East lay in his foundations, his formation was Western, and he later erected upon this what came from his own roots.”(Ilona Akyavas, Jale Erzen and Zeynep Inankur, Erol Akyavas, Istanbul, 2007, p. 7).

Untitled from 1955 is one of the earliest paintings created by Akyavas, painted when he was only twenty-three years of age and executed with a stunning balance of colour, line and form. The striking planes of blacks, whites, blues and greens exude a great sense of energy and movement to the composition as the eye shifts from one corner to the next. The changing perspectives add a unique depth to the work. The blues and whites emerging from the darker tonalities reminisce small windows opening to the skies.  

After a solo show in 1954, Akyavas held his first art exhibition in New York in 1957, deciding not to continue his architectural career and placing further focus on painting. Shortly after both shows, Akyavas’ Glory of the Kings (1959) was to be acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

In the 1960s, Akyavas gifted the present lot to one of his dear friends, Bill Smith, who himself was an architect and an urban planner. They have shared many common interests and would be in touch regularly throughout the 1960s and 1970s. One of the last memories they have shared together was their drive from Michigan to New York for Akyavas to board a ship to Turkey in the early 1970s.

Untitled, by Akyavas presents a rare opportunity to acquire one of the earliest works by this prominent Turkish artist, considered to be one of the starting points of his long and successful career.