Muhsin Kut, 1938-2022

Muhsin Kut graduated from Kabataş High School for Boys in 1958 and began his artistic career by drawing cartoons for humor magazines in the 1960s. Between 1964 and 1969 he studied in the Department of Ceramics at the State Academy of Fine Arts. He then moved to Australia, where he lived between 1969 and 1974. He returned to Istanbul and worked as a newspaper illustrator, then went back to Australia in 1981. In 1986 he settled again in Istanbul.

Having lived as an immigrant in Australia and traveled extensively across the world, Kut has developed his own distinctive technique to produce his paintings, which also serve as a kind of travel diary, commenting on various sites with refined humor and imagination. Even while employed in different professions, he never severed his ties with art, continuing to explore the pictorial language that can be seen in his current work. Although his adventurous approach is deeply palpable in all his paintings, his works are not simply travel diaries but also a means of sharing the moments, impressions, discoveries. One of his favorite subjects is landscape, whether in Turkey or elsewhere.

The scope of his interest is broad; he follows every area of the visual with passion, and the subjects he chooses and his fascinating viewpoints have a distinctive humorous sensitivity and perspective that can perhaps be attributed to the fact that he began his artistic career as a cartoonist. This striking image that he captured while waiting at the door of Galip Dede Mevlevihane (Sufi Lodge) is a synthesis of details from all the music shops on Yüksek Kaldırım.