Like most Anatolian people, my birthday is not known. I was born during the vintage, in Nevşehir. Year: 1923 (1339)

My father was from Nevşehir city and my mother from Camili Ören village in Aksaray. The family’s source of income was viticulture. The land was loamless. When I was six years old, my grandfather in Koçhisar took me in to ease the family’s livelihood.

I completed my primary school education in Koçhisar. I would go to my mother’s during the holidays.

I continued my secondary school education in Nevşehir with the help of my grandfather.

Painting became an indispensable passion for me during this period. I was also encouraged by the interest people around me were showing for my work. I would try to reduce my poverty by earning a few cents from drawing from photographs. Something unexpected happened: the mayor’s sympathy towards my teachers’ efforts and my talent for painting changed my destiny. The Municipality of Nevşehir provided a scholarship of 13 lira per month and I was sent to the Academy for painting education. Year: l939: age: 16. Beginning of a new life for me, a new world.

World War II also broke out.

The academy was very unfamiliar to me; in the beginning, the age and environment difference between me and my friends made me feel somewhat lowly. The interest shown by my teachers, especially by L. Lévy, saved me and gave me confidence. They told me I was a good and successful student.

Life was becoming more and more difficult as the war was intensifying; during those times my father died, my mother was left alone with my two younger brothers.

I had to support my family financially.

I lived in poverty during my academy education as well. On the one hand, I was responsible to earn money, on the other hand to educate myself and to study painting.

I finished the Academy in 1946.

I passed the first European scholarship exam. I was sent to France in 1948 to “Study Mural Painting and Fresco”.

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My student period at the Academy spans a contradictory environment created by the impact of the Second World War and reflected in the problems of art and culture. In this contradictory environment, I mainly focused on being able to follow the issues that could be discussed up to a limit, to see and understand the reality. I was particularly interested in new initiatives in literature and painting. I made an effort to educate myself by evaluating the contradiction between what we have been taught and what was happening around me.

L. Lévy’s teaching style, although advanced for that time and left very positive marks on one generation, still had a limited vision, a conservative method. I was only able to figure this out later. The positive side for us then was that he was not narrow minded in his criticism and evaluations and he knew how to use well defined value judgments. He transformed his passion for nature into a teaching method conform to French tradition. We have always applied the well known “nature is the greatest instructor” formula. This led us to “learning how to paint by imitating the nature”.

I could not build a conscious relationship with nature. I started later to understand the difference between the reality of nature and the reality of painting. It was impossible to create the method of figuration by interpreting the data of nature. Although I was appreciated as a student, I was aware that “something” was missing. My work did not have the competence required to solve the stylistic problems of painting. In recent years, I was thrilled when I discovered from a Gauguin reproduction, as in harmony and technically, how yellow can be shown even more yellow…

After a while, I realized that I had to do my own thing.

I was in this mood when I went to Paris in 1948. I saw the masters closely. I was disappointed by some of them, I admired some others. The same thing happened regarding the French society, the French people. I would think that in a society that has reached such a cultural level, the individual would also be of a certain level, not lower. On the contrary, there I saw interesting examples of conservatism and reactionism. Every encounter helped me get rid of a bit of my conditioning and get closer to our reality.

In the beginning, I attended Lhote’s studio in Paris (as part of my study program). I was not able to adapt, so I left (I have an allergy to schoolist teaching). I worked on my own for a while. I knew there was a lot to learn and to apply. I tried to gain these from the masters. I wanted my work to be the syntheses closest to my abilities, not adaptations. I produced a lot; During this time I realized that my paintings are merely intellectual attempts, kind of forced.

In these efforts I observed that drawing was my strong side. I became a student of Léger, hoping that it would be useful and that I would benefit from the facilities of the studio. At that time, I was exploring his art, and I especially liked his figurative works. This time, I approached the Léger style without any fear, but I did not imitate him. I showed him my work several times, he liked it. This admiration did not mislead me because I knew the reasons. What was important to me was understanding and getting to know Léger. I have adopted his methods of expressing because I found them close to me. But this pure plastic formation was foreign to me.

During my years in France, I reflected and learned about art, the artist, and the role and responsibilities of the artist in the society. I also learned that the only way of salvation is to find the “unique to us”.

On my return to my homeland (1954), I found the artistic atmosphere complicated.

I knew what I had to do. For a while, I tried to assimilate the rational and stylistic side of Eastern Art in terms of form and essence by harmonizing the formal expression methods I learned from Léger with the data of traditional Eastern Art. But I knew from the start that I was going to get into a formal vicious circle.

I firmly believed in the necessity of taking the Human as a basic element in painting, this was the only way out. But I did this by believing, sincerely, by living the human as a human (this feeling prevailed throughout my education). In the works I created with intellectual efforts, I would see that “something” was still missing, even if everything about them was perfect.

In my paintings after the 1960s, I took “narration” as the main principle by shouldering the risks of falling behind. I found my own truth in the reality of the “Men of the Soil”, whose struggle for life, worries, pain and poverty I had also lived. They said “out of date”. They said “misery literature”, I didn’t care; it was not true. I was not pretentious; I was comfortable having lived my painting. At a time where daily and satellite initiatives were dominant, I had solved my problems and drawn the strict boundaries of my responsibility as an artist in this society.

Before all else, I could not be separated from the social and natural environment I came from. The “sensitivity” this environment created in my personality became the starting point in my relationship with my environment. And again, it was only natural that I was under the influence of class problems that shaped the life of the social environment I came from. Being a product of this environment, I was trying to shape the life and psychology of the Men of the Soil.

I would like to say that I know that the art of painting is a “narrative art”, that the narrative I aim necessitates “form” and that the concrete quality of the narration can only be determined through form.

I wanted to present the reality of the Man of the Soil by believing, living and feeling it.

If I could give this reality a pictorial quality, if I could be “convincing” solely in this, then I have come close to essence-form harmony.

To break away from reality would be to enter a formal vicious circle. I believe that the truth in art is “the truth of human and society”.

From the beginning I believed that art has a social function. There is a close correlation between the usefulness and the reality of art.

I have been against the changeable. Because I knew it’s impossible to stay stationary …

Every unnecessary move results in a negative change. Change is not renewal: what matters is formation…

NEŞET GÜNAL