Dino ABIDINE (1913-1993)
Abidin Dino was a Turkish artist. He was one of the representatives of such styles as Surrealism and Magic Realism.
The first years of his life, Abidin Dino spent with his parents in Geneva, Switzerland and France. They eventually returned to Istanbul in 1925. Dino began his secondary education at the American high school Robert College of Istanbul but ceased his studies in order to entirely devote himself to painting, drawing and writing.
Dino's first articles and cartoons were published in newspapers and magazines. In 1933 he, along with five other young innovative painters, founded the "Group D", which held several exhibitions displaying their artworks. Around that same time, he produced illustrations for Nazım Hikmet’s books of poetry.
In 1933, Sergei Yutkevich, a Soviet director invited Dino to the Lenfil Studios in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg). With Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's, the first President of the Republic of Turkey, encouragement Dino accepted this offer. There, he worked as a scenery designer and assistant director at several film studios, and also directed a film called "Miners". Shortly after his return to Turkey, he moved to Paris, where he worked between 1937 and 1939, meeting such famous artists as Tristan Tzara, Gertrude Stein, and Pablo Picasso.
When he moved back to Istanbul, he became a participant of the famous "Harbor Exhibition", comprising of paintings of the city's dockworkers and fishermen by well-known Turkish painters of the time. The exhibition was a public success, and the same year Dino was asked to design the Turkish pavilion at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Concurrently, he published articles and cartoons in several of the foremost magazines of that time, studying a new approach to realism.
During the Second World War, the artist created drawings inspired by the warfare. But the way he treated political subjects in wartime was disliked by the authorities. As a result, the martial law command of Istanbul banished him and his elder brother in 1941 to southeastern Anatolia.
The period of 1941-1945 was artistically very productive for Dino. He worked for a local newspaper, TurkSozu, producing articles and drawings that illustrated the hard lives and working conditions of agricultural labourers in that region. It was in Anatolia that Abidin Dino wrote his plays "Bald" and "Heirs", and began interested in sculpture. In the year 1951, the artist was allowed to leave Turkey. At first, he went first to Rome, Italy where he stayed nine months, and then moved to Paris in 1952.
Within a relatively short period of time, Dino's home in Paris became the stamping-ground of many prominent artists and writers. He first lived in a studio on the top floor of Max Ernst's apartment on the quay of Saint-Michel, and later moved to a small flat in L'Eure. Many of his foreign and also Turkish friends, including Yaşar Kemal, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar, Nazım Hikmet, and Melih Cevdet, met one another at his home. For eight years starting from 1954, Abidin Dino participated in the "Salon de Mai" exhibitions in Paris.
Abidin Dino visited Turkey in 1969 where he opened an exhibition of his artworks. Later on, he frequently participated in both solo and group exhibitions.
Abidin Dino had two favourite themes in painting: hands and flowers. In a book of small drawings entitled "Guzin's Abidins", which consists of drawings and essays by Abidin Dino, glimpses of the love and sense of solidarity are seen, which were his inspiration.
Abidin Dino, né le 23 mars 1913 à Constantinople et mort le 7 décembre 1993 à Paris, est un peintre turc.
Il a mené une carrière internationale, exposant ses œuvres depuis 1947 non seulement en Turquie et en France, mais aussi aux États-Unis, en Europe et en Russie. Son goût de la recherche créative, sa passion pour la vie et un travail soutenu l'ont amené à varier sans cesse ses techniques, de la plume à la sépia, du dessin à la peinture, de l'aquarelle au pochoir et même à la sculpture. Abidine revendiquait dans son art l'influence de la calligraphie orientale, comme en témoigne le tracé de sa signature. Il a illustré les œuvres de Nazim Hikmet, de Yachar Kemal, de Guillevic, d'Adonis. Il dessinait ou peignait des figures oniriques à la limite de l'abstraction, où peuvent se lire l'ambiguïté du réel et la quête métaphysique d'un autre lieu : mains aux doigts enlacés, îles suspendues, nus en forme de fleurs ou de mondes tournants, fenêtres cosmiques, foules indistinctes, ou encore spectre de la mort nucléaire.
Abidine réunissait en lui tout un faisceau de contrastes dont il jouait et s'amusait. Né à Istanbul dans une famille ottomane de grande aristocratie, il a commencé sa vie dans l'opulence, entre sa ville natale, Paris et la Suisse ; sa gouvernante lui a appris un français parfait aux formules adéquates, dont le charme et la pureté transparaissent dans ses textes. La ruine de sa famille l'oblige à gagner sa vie dès l'âge de quinze ans, et il propose ses caricatures dans le quartier des imprimeries de la Sublime-Porte, à Istanbul. En 1933, il fonde le premier groupe de peintres d'avant-garde en Turquie ; invité en 1934 à Leningrad, il travaille et se lie avec Eisenstein, Isaac Babel, Meyerhold ; un bref passage en 1938 à Paris lui fait connaître Tristan Tzara, Picasso et Gertrude Stein. Il doit alors rentrer en Turquie ; mais ses prises de position marxistes lui valent l'exil. De 1941 à 1947, il est envoyé en résidence surveillée à Adana. C'est là qu'il épouse en 1943 Guzine Dikel, une jeune universitaire d'Istanbul.
