Fikret Muallâ, 1903-1967

From an early age Fikret Muallâ suffered from bouts of depression and anxiety, and these were exacerbated by various events. He was left permanently lame when he broke his ankle as a first-year high school student, whilst his mother died from Spanish flu soon after. After graduating from the Galatasaray High School, his father sent him to study engineering in Europe. Muallâ was more interested in art, although he preferred to follow his own instincts rather than to take formal instruction. In 1928 he suffered a severe mental breakdown while in Berlin and had to be hospitalized. Upon returning to Turkey, he obtained a post as a drawing instructor in Ayvalık although this did not last. Back in Paris in 1939, he adopted a thoroughly bohemian lifestyle. Fikret Muallâ held his first solo exhibition in Paris in 1954 and a second a year later. He was taken under the wing of the industrialist Lhermine and later by Raquel Anglés, a close friend and well-known collector, who helped him when his depression descended. Muallâ died in 1967. The Turkish government acquired a number of his paintings when they were auctioned in Paris, and this group became the core of the Fikret Muallâ hall at the Ankara Museum of Painting and Sculpture.

While the vividness of the primary colors Muallâ preferred in his paintings may have cheerful associations, his paintings mostly bear the signs of his tragic life, which was marked by depression. Fikret Muallâ’s paintings of street life with their cafés, restaurants, and entertainments, are overlaid with a strong sense of melancholy.