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19 March
1938, PAINT and COLOUR
I
am an art teacher in a major city on the Central Anatolian plateau. What
good Friends are books and brushes on such a city. I work to a timetable
I have drawn up for myself: I amake at damn and read until sunrise. Then
I paint until it is time for lessons. But when they are over horn
difficult it is for my tired mind to find rest.
I am not hard to please. I do not expect to find museums, art
exhibitions, symphony conceits, theatres or zoos in every city of
Turkey. Nor I did hope there would be beautiful gardens in every corner
of Anatolia. What I miss is a little color; a green hill, a couple of
trees. a stream of a lakeside. You must admit that for an art teacher
and a painter this is but the most modest wish Imprisoning a man is not
only to take away his liberty, but to deprive him of colour. is it not ?
Hamit Görele
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AN EXPLANATION, 1967 Academy of Fine Arts ,Exhibition Catalogue
There was a time
when
my intellectual friends who visited my exhibition did not know
what to make of my paintings because they mere modem. They
should
ask me why I distorted nature so
that way, accuse me of making it ugly, and ask
why
I could not paint nature as
it is.
Time passed... When net convictions and
a
new
Concept of painting spread around the
world.
and began to knock at the doors of our country, and to impinge upon the
attitudes
and perceptions of our intellectuals, there was a pause. As the reality
of Picasso became incapable of objecting to murders carried out in the
name of modern art. Today's audiences view
exhibitions from a more appropriate angle.
Now
let us consider those paintings by Picasso which they found so strange
In our literature are there no expressions, no metaphors which lack any
resemblance to nature?
<GERİ
My CONCEPT OF ART ,12 - 29 June 1967, Academy of Fine Arts Exhibition
Blue is not beautiful because it is sky and sea. Instaed
sea and sky are beautiful because they are
blue, Green is not beautiful because it is a
tree. Instaed the tree is beautiful because
it is green. And the
same is true of clouds, mountains and country
side So if blue does not need to be either sky or
sea, or green a tree iğn order to be
beautiful. Since the sky is beautiful
because it is blue, not because it is the sky,
and clouds beautiful hence they are white, not
because they are clouds, then what justification do our intellectuals
have for insisting on nature an nothing else? If you paint a tree blue
there is a furor. "Good Lord, how can you have blue trees?" The matter
is as simple as that, but by no means as simple to explain
<BACK
HAMIT GORELE
EXHIBITION at İsmail Uygar Galery, 16 May 1946
Hamit has such modern views
of art that he truly deserves to be called the "Artist of Tomorrow".
Ahmet Rasim put many places in Istanbul onto the literary map, and
similarly
Hamit has
put Kurtuluş, the district where he lives, and
Ayazpaşa into many of his paintings.
Hizmet Feridun ES
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GORELE EXHIBITION
I believe that Hamit Gorele was the first
Turkish artist to acknowledge expressionism.
Adnan Turani
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ON HAMIT
GORELE, Cumhuriyet newspaper, 25 October 1978
"I thank you for your praise of my
exhibition and your sensitivity But
what
moved me most of all was
your reference to the fact that most artists in Turkey have to make a
living at another job other than their art. At least teaching art is the
best of such alternatives, Zeki
Bey.
At high school I often yearned to be at my easel, and your
words
brought these memories flooding back." This is
what
the artist said when we
met – unfortunately, sadly, for the last time – shortly after he opened
an exhibition of his work at the Akbank Art Gallery in Osmanbey on 16
October 1/78. That day he had difficulty
walking
despite the stick in his hand. I left Gorele
with
a sense of bitterness. Horn many Gorele's
had a nation of this size produced, how many Gorele's
had it understood in their lifetimes, and how many did it grant the
recognition they had deserved for so long.
<BACK
TRIBUTE TO AN
ARTIST,Sanat Çevresi, Cumhuriyet, NOVEMBER 1978
Much more remains to be said about the new
dimension which Gorele has brought to Turkish art, about his struggle
and the power
of his work.
Those who appreciate the worth
of Turkish painting recognise the part he has played. This has to be
the due of an artist whose
paintings entitled "Wife, of the Pharaoh" and "The Odalisque" were
exhibited beside those of such great contemporary painters as Cezanne,
Matisse, Picasso, Bonnard, Lhote and Soutine as far back as 1930. A few
months ago, at nearly eighty years of age, that same Hamit Gorele
traveled to Ankara, despite health problems
which
made it difficult for him to walk,
in order to meet the new minister of culture and to discuss a proposal
with
the Turkish Television Corporation. Neither came about. They even spelt
his name wrong
in the official reply. There is no need to go on Director generals and
ministers come and go, but artists remain. The day mill come
when
not just the paintings of Gorele and many others, but their letters and
photographs are eagerly sought by collectors...
Prof. Türkkaya Ataöv
<BACK
GÖRELE HAKKINDA
SÖYLEŞİ, Ankara 1982, Turkuaz Sanat Galerisi
Görele 'nin çoşkulu ve hatta fırtınalı üslubu beni hep ilgilendirmiştir.
Onun doğaya insana ve nesneye bakışı, gerçek bir sanatçı
duyarlılığını yansıtır. Görele'nin yaptığı resimlerde aynı yıllarda,
başkaları ile paylaştığı başka hiçbir ortak yön yoktur.
Çok kişisel, çok özgür, lirik ve dışavurumcu nitelikleri vardır, ama
bunları bir akımın özellikleri olarak kullanmaz.
TURAN EROL
<GERİ
Hamit Görele
SERGİSİ, Mimar Sinan University publications
27 April 1987
Hamit Gorele is on of the principal artists of modern movement which
developed in Turkish Art during hte 1930's. He was the first artist to
oppose the affectation of "pretty pictures" and the conventions of
personality, the first to reject idle taboos regardless of the risk of
not being accepted.
Prof. Özdemir Altan
<GERİ
HAMİT GÖRELE,
Türk resim sanatı adına ömür boyu mücadele.
Apart from the wealth of colour and exuberance ivhich he conveyed on his
canvas, Hamit GOrele had a large repertoire of classical and folk songs
which he would murmur as he worked. He painted on every kind of
material, on magazine pages, sackcloth, on both side of canvases.
His prize-winning masterpieces were sometimes edged with strips of
wood insted of proper frames. He was a campaigner of his ag who gave the
doctor a paintings in payment for his medical examination.
He carried on painting until he was so old he could barely stand; he
held many exhibitions; and he resolutely fought against apathy and
injustice in the name of art Prof. Tokkaya Ataov mentioned this in one
of his lectures (Turkuaz Art Gallery. Ankara 1962): "That is the fate of
all innovators. Everything must he evaluated in the context of the
time.There may be those who today can see little that is new in his
words or his work. But at a time when Calli (Turkish painter) reigned
supreme, what Gorele did and said was, disturbing to say the least.
He was an artist who should have taught at the Academy of Fine Arts, but
was never offered a post Why Because he would have
discomfited so many people. "Gorele was a prolific artist.
Devoting his live to art he mentioned in an article ' I have no
intention of telling the bitter story of how we got where we are today '
Gorele waged a long , selfless struggle on behalf of modern Turkish art
until he migrated from this world.
His loving son,AYDIN GÖRELE
<BACK
A HAMIT GORELE IN
TURKISH ART, Cumhuriyet, 5 June 1982
Gorele created paintings with the skill of classical painting
techniques in which vigorous brushwork predominated. Crisp, expressive
and large brush spots, an regular, thick lines of paint breathing in the
thickness of the brush. It is a lyricism sesitively probing the mystique
of nature, and in my view also a net kind of impressionist romantic
interpretation. A full, courageous and clynamic, an experienced and
mature colourism conveyed freshly palette to canvas, always converging
and breathing with this masterful brush technique is the focal point of
this fundamental form in Gorele's art.
And now Hamit Gorele has migrated from this world. One by one these
old soldiers from a time, when painting and art were regarded as a kind
of amusement, a game, an empty whim silently cleparting. What should we
do for the work they have left behind? What should be done to ensure
that the reputation of these masters and pioneers who have contributed
so much to our national culture lives on for future generations, in
recognition of their selfless efforts an creativity.
Zeki Çakaloz
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