Yüksel Arslan

Yüksel Arslan was born as the son of an immigrant worker family in the Bahariye neighbourhood in Eyüp, İstanbul (24 July 1933). He attended Eyüp Secondary School (1945-48) and later Istanbul Boy’s High School (1949-52). The government inspector by Gogol, which he read in secondary school and later the world classics, would trigger his deep interest in the act of “reading” the foundation upon which he built his entire oeuvre. In 1953-54, his trips to Anatolia helped him find his unique technique and convey the knowledge and traditional arts of Anatolian civilizations into his own art. Arslan’s working process includes the use of self-made and antique tools and the production of his own colors using ancient methods of combining raw pigments with his own saliva, blood, urine, and other organic materials like honey, earth, and egg whites.
He opened his first exhibition titled ‘Homage to Relations, Behaviour, Boredoms’ at the Maya Gallery in 1955 and the second one titled ‘Phallisme’, at the Istanbul German Cultural Center in 1959, which included autobiographical and erotic works. Meanwhile, André Breton hears about Arslan’s paintings through writer and translator Edouard Roditi and invites him to ‘L’Exhibition Internationale du Surréalisme’ to be held at the Daniel Cordier Gallery (1959-60), however the circumstances of the day has prevented Arslan from travelling to Paris.
In 1961, he left his homeland and went to live in Paris with 15 works upon the invitation of Raymond Cordier, where his first solo exhibition ‘Homonculus-cucus-palus, planus-phallus-micrococcus’ took place in 1962. With Cordier’s guidance, he finds the name ‘Arture’ forged on the word "art" and the suffix "-ure", as in painting, sculpture, architecture, etc.). to classify his works. His most important series are: Le Capital (1969-1975), Actualisation du Capital (1975-1980), Influences (1980-1984), Autoartures (1984-1986), L’Homme (1986-1999), Nouvelles Influences (2000-2010), Journal (2011-2017).

Submitted by Galerist