Original print (Ed. 79/100) 1965/2000
ÖZDEMİIR ALTAN, (1931-), Privately Published, [Istanbul], 2000.
Edition of 79/100. Original print. 50x70 cm.
Signed and dated on the lower right, edition number is on the lower left.
Born in 1931, lives in Istanbul. In 1956 he graduates from Zeki Faik Izer's atelier in IDGSA Painting Department. Besides the Paris biennials in 1963-1965, he participated in numerous international and national art activities, he opened so many solo exhibitions. His name became famous as a writer and lecturer. He was the first artist who improved and represented some western ideas such as the modernist, avant-garde approach to pop art and especially postmodernism in Turkey.
He was also the first curator who attempt to organize an exhibition in Turkey; Avni Lifij's exhibition in 1968 was the first example.
As having his own fiction world the artist not only assists Contemporary Turkish Art but also gives shape to its fate and it is seen that he is the one that impresses almost all artists of his generation and the next generation about today's Turkish Art. About this subject he expresses; "An artist gives references, the effect is inevitable, not the method but the result is important."
With his productive natural talent, Altan proves that he has an endless, dynamic, energetic personality.
In his creations, he appropriates an art understanding that coincidentally mixed incongruous elements such as; different textures, structure elements, materials, art view, light, etc. With clearer thoughts and ways from 1988, he developed the coincidental mixing method to prove artistic space is made up of different concepts, backgrounds, edifices, and logic that meet at extreme points.
He examined spas and has taken them as the main course in his lectures. As a result of his research on spas, rather than the historic way he clearly declared that; "art meets from different ideas, logic, sources, structure and concepts". After this conclusion, he declared his ideas (with the title of space in art) first time, in front of academicians, at an associated professorship lecture in 1970.
After that declaration, Altan has improved a new international art feature on that allegation. He coincidently made a unity from the different participants' works such as landscapes, plans, maps, and the district sketches, and at the end, participants applied the design with the alien materials. This method has been performed by totally different participants and it was the first of all in the art history of spas commentary.