Footballers collecting art

İHSAN YILMAZ - ISTANBUL

The notion that sportspersons are people of different worlds far from culture and arts is quite widespread, and to my surprise, though I came across quite many sportspersons at art fairs and events, I had no idea that they can be so involved in arts to the level of collecting artworks.

At a special dinner I attended in the Cihangir neighborhood of Istanbul’s Beyoğlu district last week, I realized that there are many art collectors among footballers. The organizer of the event was an ophthalmologist, Baha Toygar. The parties he threw in the pre-corona times became very famous in the art world.

This time, he organized an event to which a small number of people attended. The guests were mostly artists. Painter Ekrem Yalçındağ, Burcu Perçin and Ali Elmacı and photographer Fethi Karaduman were some of the people among the guests.

Yalçındağ arrived a bit late at the event, and as an excuse, he told that footballer Volkan Demirel, who is the collector of his paintings, made a visit to his workshop.

It made me wonder if there are more collectors in the sports world and whose paintings they were buying.

Soon my curiosity sated. I came to know about people in the sports world who stand out as art collectors. Demirel, Servet Çetin and Selçuk İnan stand out among those with the largest collections. Demirel was one of the names that encouraged the sports world to collect art. Serdar Aziz also has an important collection.

From the basketball world, Barış Ermiş and Melih Mahmutoğlu are two of the prominent people who are keen on buying paintings.

It is seen that people from the football world mostly favor the leading contemporary artists of today. Here is a list of the artists whose works they are keen to collect:

- Servet Çetin: Ekrem Yalçındağ, Ramazan Bayrakoğlu, Haluk Akakçe, Selma Gürbüz, Adnan Çoker, Seçkin Pirim, Bahadır Baruter, Füreyya Koral, Ahmet Oran başta olmak üzere geniş bir koleksiyona sahip.

- Volkan Demirel: Selahattin Yıldırım, Haluk Akakçe, Ali Elmacı, Şahin Demir, Ekrem Yalçındağ, Erdoğan Zümrütoğlu, Ahmet Oran, Tayfun Gülnar.

- Selçuk İnan: Joan Miro, Ekrem Yalçındağ, Kemal Önsoy, Halil Altındere, Young Deok, Fırat Engin, Eda Baysal, Mehmet Gün, Ahmet Oran, Nesren Jake, Hasan Pehlevan, Ardan Özmenoğlu.

- Volkan Babacan: Ekrem Yalçındağ, Mustafa Ata, Haluk Akakçe, Selma Gürbüz, Ergin İnan, Orhan Umut, Eser Gündüz, Taner Yılmaz, Alican Leblebici, Arzu Akgün.

- Arda Turan: Komet, Murat Morova, Şefik Bursalı.