Erol Akyavas

He graduated from the Istanbul Fine Arts Academy, Department of Architecture. Between 1950 and 1952,
He attended the Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu Workshop as a guest student between 1952 and 1953.
He studied with Andre Lhote and Fernand Leger in Paris and took classes at the Florence Academy during the summers.
He participated in the exhibitions 'Cercle et Carre' and 'Salon des Realites Nouvelles' between 1954 and 1960.
He studied architecture at IIT Chicago in the USA with Mies Van Der Rohe.
He made designs together with Eero Saarinen between 1960 and 1962.
He was a finalist for the Agahan award for his work on the Cappadocia Hotel Architecture in 1964-65.
He settled in New York in 1967.
He is known for his abstract works that bear traces of calligraphy and miniature arts.
He first turns to geometric abstraction and then to surrealist practices. Surrealist
qualities, especially those that became apparent in terms of spatial relations with the architectural education he received
The artist starts from the concept of architectural space.
In the 1970s, he was influenced by Turkish miniature art and included pyramids, coffins, locks,
He created paintings that included symbols of iron bars, torture and death.
He applied different perspective orders in his city paintings.
In the 1980s, he turned to calligraphy paintings. In his later periods, he worked on calligraphy, miniature and marbling.
He created it to establish an abstract order with traditional genres such as.
A retrospective exhibition was held at Istanbul Modern in 2013.
Erol Akyavaş, with his interest in mysticism, synthesizes dreams and reality, the seen and the unseen.
While creating it, he described what he wanted to do as writing modern poetry in the ghazal form.
(From Istanbul Modern, Retrospective)