Aydın Ayan celebrates 45 years in art
ISTANBUL
As part of his latest exhibition titled “Mystery and Magical Reality – 45th Art Anniversary Retrospective,” organized between April 7 and May 10 at the Tophane-i Amire Kültür and Arts Center, a catalog has been published by the Mimar Sinan Fine Arts Faculty Publications. The catalog presents a selection from the artist’s works since the past.
“Art is the most beautiful, the most competent, the most special way of communication, like love, life and nature. It can neither fit in, nor can be encompassed within boundaries; it is a magical mystery,” Ayan said about art in the preface of the book.
“Any attempt on my part to explain my attitude to art must arise from me asking myself the questions why, for whom, what and how in full consciousness of this main field of activity, and in finding satisfactory answers to the questions,” he said.
“My pictures narrate something, and by narration reveal. They depict not only the visible, but also the invisible. Though my starting point is life itself, my pictures are not based on a dry, arid naturalistic approach in which the picture is merely glanced at and passed over and the meaning almost immediately exhausted, but rather on a critical realism in which thought is combined with reality from the widest point of view. The dove-tailing process employed in the formation of the picture leads to the generation of new thought and the widening of the dimensions of thought,” Ayan added.
About Aydın Ayan
Ayan enrolled in Istanbul State Academy of Fine Arts in 1972 and graduated from the department of painting in 1977 with an M.A. degree in fine arts. He was appointed as an assistant in the department of painting at the academy in 1979. In 1983, he received a PhD degree in fine arts from Mimar Sinan University. He became an associate professor in 1990 and a full professor in 1998.
Ayan received a scholarship from the British Council and studied art at London University Goldsmiths College between 1986 and 1987. In 1993, he went to the U.S. on an Eisenhower Fellowship and carried out research about the role of culture and art in the development of educational systems.
Since 1975 he has participated in many group exhibitions in Turkey and abroad. He has held more than 25 solo exhibitions, including one at the Goldsmiths Gallery.
He has won 19 prizes, including one in poem and all the others in painting competitions, including the Achievement Award at the 40th and 47th State Exhibition Painting and Sculpture, First Prize in the Senate Foundation’s Atatürk Painting Competition, as well as the Abdi İpekçi Peace and Friendship Prize and the R.A.H. Şuvalov Honor Medal from the Russian Imperial Academy of Arts in Moscow.
His works are in the collections of the Turkish Parliament, Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University Istanbul Painting and Sculpture Museum, state museums in Ankara and İzmir, the Selçuk Yasar Museum in İzmir, the Culture Ministry, Istanbul Modern, Contemporary Art Museum of Anadolu University, Hacettepe Art Museum in Ankara, Atatürk House in Şuhut, the western province of Afyonkarahisar (11 paintings depicting the Turkish War of Independence) and Eczacıbaşı Foundation, Nurol Culture and Art Foundation and the Eisenhower Foundation in Philadelphia, the U.S., Turkish Central Bank, Akbank, İş Bank, Yapı Kredi Bank as well as in various private, official and institutional collections.
Ayan is still working as a full professor in the Faculty of Fine Arts of Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University and he continues to paint in Istanbul and Şile.