Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu

Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu (1911 – 21 September 1975) was a Turkish painter, mosaic-maker, muralist, writer and poet. His art work was inspired by Anatolian village scenes and folk literature, and included traditional handicraft folk patterns.

Early life Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu was born in 1911 in Görele on the Black Sea, the second child in a family with five. In 1931 he left the Academy temporarily to go to France with his brother, studying French first in Dijon and then in Lyon. He then studied at the Andre Lohte's studio in Paris, where he met his future wife, Eren Eyüboğlu (née Ernestine Leibovici). They were married 1933. Eren organized his first one-man show at the Hasefer Gallery in Bucharest in 1935.

Back in Turkey, he completed his studies and obtained his diploma in 1936. In 1937, he entered the Academy as an assistant and translator of Léopold Lévy. He remained at the Academy until his death in 1975. He was sent by the government to work in Edirne in 1938 and then in Çorum and Iskilip in 1942, a period that marked a turning point in his artistic career.

Career and mid-life

Eyüboğlu exhibited with the D Group of painters starting in 1936, and founded the Group of 10 for young painters. Impressed by the Musée de l'Homme's exhibition of African art on a second trip to Paris, he started using woodblock printing in order to allow more people to see his work.

He had an affair with artist Mari Gerekmezyan, while still he was married. Throughout the 1940s, Gerekmezyan assisted Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu in his artwork. Gerekmezyan died in 1947. He also prepared a panel of for the Brussels Fair in 1958,

List of mosaic mural works

Ankara Opera House (1946), Ankara Etibank (1953), 4th Levent neighborhood, Istanbul, residential walls (1956–1957), and the newspaper Cumhuriyet where he had a weekly art column from 1952 to 1958. His first published poem, Yaradana Mektup (Letter to the Creator), was published in 1941.

Other poetry books are as follows:

Tuz 1952 Üçü Birden, 1953 Dördü Birden, 1956 Karadut 69, 1969 Dol Karabakır Dol, 1974 Yaşadım, 1977 Tezek

Death and legacy Eyüboğlu died on 21 September 1975 from pancreatic cancer.

Posthumously in 1976, Eyüboğlu was selected as "artist of the year" by Milliyet newspaper.