Footnotes

Provenance
Property from a private collection, California
Acquired from Charles Burch, San Francisco, California by the above in 2021
Originally in the collection of William N. Burch, San Francisco and Sacramento, California
Galerie Reine, Fikret Mualla exhibition, New York, June 1970


Born into a wealthy family in 1903 in Kadiköy, Istanbul, Turkey, Fikret Mualla was an avant-guard painter of Turkish descent. Recognised alongside Abidin Dino as one of Turkey's most important 20th Century artists, Mualla depicted familiar scenes with vigour and life.

As a child, an injury prevented him from realising his sporting career, resulting in a permanent limp, thus rendering him an easy object of abuse. His difficult childhood was the root of a lifetime's mental torment, anxiety and illness later necessitating numerous periods in psychiatric hospitals and institutions.

Although struggling academically, his period of study in Germany was paramount in laying the foundations for his artistic career. German expressionism strongly influenced his work, encouraging his already evident detachment from a classical approach to painting. The violence, lack of harmony, and clashes in form and colour of expressionism, resonated in Mualla's increasingly unstable character, and aroused a desire to produce work of a similar nature. His mental volatility, accompanied by a growing dependency on alcohol, developed even more so upon his move to Paris in 1939.

The Parisian social scene proved to be a subject worthy of gouache, his preferred medium. He would work quickly, frequenting the taverns, bars and cafes which would prove to be places detrimental to his addiction.

In Mualla's works he likes to depict social gatherings in familiar spaces such as cafes and bars. Suggestive of Fauvism, he uses vivid, bold blocks of colour to translate the busy scenes onto paper. His work creates equilibrium between space and subject, and as a result destroys any hierarchy between figure and location. Mualla applies the paint in an urgent manner, quickly and fluently, demonstrating his competency as an artist.