ahmet yakupoglu

WORK IDENTIFICATION

Painter: Ahmet YAKUPOĞLU  

Dimensions: 94x74 cm

AHMET YAKUPOĞLU

He was born in Kütahya in 1920. He completed his secondary education in Kütahya. In 1941, after being discovered and encouraged by Süheyl Ünver, who had come to Kütahya, he graduated in 1945 from the Feyhaman Duran studio of the academy now known as Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University.

Meanwhile, through Ord. Prof. Süheyl Ünver, he became a ney student of Neyzen Halil Dikmen. At the same time, he learned illumination art and miniature painting from Süheyl Ünver, the person he valued most in his life.

Although he was a painter capable of opening exhibitions in Paris at that time, he preferred to return to his hometown Kütahya and paint nature. By initiating studies in Turkish music in Kütahya, he taught many classical Turkish music instruments—especially the ney—to young people and enthusiasts. He revived the rebap instrument, which was about to disappear, and ensured that it was learned again. By teaching dozens of people to play the ney, he helped Kütahya become known as a city of ney players. His preferred tuning for the ney was the Şah tuning. During those years, he also participated in broadcasts on Istanbul Radio.

In his paintings, he primarily depicted the nature around Kütahya and its surroundings, rendering a great service to our culture and arts by preserving disappearing streets and historical structures for future generations. Without feeling the need to make any preliminary sketches or designs, he painted directly onto canvas or any material he could find, using oil paint or watercolor. He portrayed all kinds of water with extraordinary beauty, almost making it flow within his paintings. For this reason, he is also known as the painter of waters.

Outside of Kütahya, he created paintings from many cities—especially Istanbul, as well as Konya, Bursa, İznik, Antalya, and Amasya—which now carry documentary value.

He contributed to the establishment of the Kütahya Museum and, as an expression of his love for nature and history, went beyond painting by carrying out extensive afforestation work in Kütahya. In addition to providing material and moral support for these efforts and for the restoration of historical monuments in Kütahya, he also physically participated in the work.

By donating his land and personally designing the project, he worked himself to ensure the construction of the Tiled Mosque, which has today become a symbol of Kütahya.

He transformed his home into a center of culture and art, turning it into a museum and educational space open to everyone through oil painting, illumination, miniature art, and music studies.

One of his most important aspects was his mastery of miniature art. His miniature album depicting contemporary Kütahya culture and art in a classical style, as well as his Nasreddin Hodja anecdotes, are works of extraordinary beauty. In 1995, his miniature “My Street and the Tiled Mosque” was deemed worthy of the Türkiye İş Bankası Grand Prize for Culture and Arts.

In portraiture, he painted some of his friends and people from his surroundings using charcoal and oil painting, and he also prepared an album composed of wildflowers from his garden.

Together with the paintings in various collections and in his home, he created nearly four thousand paintings. About one thousand of the works in his home were first donated to the “Ahmet Yakupoğlu Culture and Art Foundation,” which bore his name; later, following the dissolution of the foundation, all his real estate, musical instruments, and his library consisting