In Memoriam | Balkan Naci İslimyeli ( 1947 - 2022)

The artist, who has directed more than 20 master's and doctoral theses, died on Thursday, April 14, leaving hundreds of works behind, as a result of the cancer treatment he was diagnosed with, while still working as a faculty member at Işık University. Funeral on Saturday

He will be buried in Burgazada.

Mavi Boncuk |

from an interview

"...Art education should begin with birth. As a nation, we live the most receptive and most valuable years of new generations by keeping them away from art. We see education as a mere process of acquiring a profession, and therefore we regard art as a special and even objectionable field in which only the person concerned is engaged. However, art is the biggest school that raises free, original and creative individuals regardless of their job. It is also the biggest contribution to the education of democratic and questioning generations. Generations that grow up without reaching this awareness start their art education very late, that is, they come to us. For this reason, part of our training is about damage assessment and restoration. It's like reshaping an advanced human being. There are great challenges for both sides. My motto is "start art from within yourself". Real material is man's closed spaces, corridors, labyrinths. While holding their hands and walking them around in this area, I try to open them to life and teach them to find and extract their belongings from there..." Balkan Naci İslimyeli 

Balkan Naci İslimyeli (b.1947 Adapazarı - d. 14 April 2022 Istanbul Burgazada) Turkish painter, lecturer.

He studied painting for five years in the painting department, which he entered in 1967 by passing the applied talent exam of the Istanbul Applied Fine Arts School of the period, which is now Marmara University Fine Arts Faculty. He became an assistant in 1973, a year later at the school he graduated with first place. He went to Salzburg in 1975 to study lithography (lithography) with the scholarship of the Austrian Government, which he won during his assistantship. Continuing his thesis studies when he returned home, the artist completed his master's degree in 1977 with the thesis "Fiction as a Visual Art Element". He went to Florence in 1980, this time with the scholarship of the Italian Government; He worked for two years at the Painting Department of the Florence Academy of Fine Arts. He returned home in 1982. The artist, who received the diploma of proficiency in art, which is equivalent to a doctorate, in 1983, became an associate professor in the painting department three years later in 1986. 

He went to New York in 1989 to work on contemporary arts. İslimyeli, who worked here in 1990 with the invitation of New York University Hagop Kevorkian Center for the Near East, continued his studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts in 1991 with a Fulbright scholarship. He studied at Trinity College in Hartford, USA, where he was invited as a guest artist. He became a professor in 1996. He worked for short periods in the places he visited with invitations from different countries. In addition to his education, İslimyeli writes art books, poems and stories, and is also interested in cinema. His poems and stories were published in the magazines Dost, Oculation, Yazi, Show, Argos, Kitaplık. Painting workshop under his own name at Marmara University.