Ceramic artist (B. 2nd June 1910, Istanbul - D. 25th August 1997, Istanbul). She was from
the famous Şakir Pasha family. The painter Fahrelnisa Zeid was her aunt and the
writer Halikarnas Balıkçısı (Cevat Şakir Kabaağaçlı) was her uncle. She was
also the niece of the gravure artist Aliye Berger from the same family. She
finished the Notre Dame de Sion High School (1927). She attended the
Department of Philosophy of the Faculty of Literature of the Istanbul
University for a while. She received violin lessons from Charles Berger, who
was the famous violin artist of the period and who would get married afterwards
with the aunt of Füreya, Aliye Berger. She was interested in music and
literature since her young ages. She wrote music critics and she made
translations in the newspaper “Vatan”
between the years of 1940-44.
Koral started to pay
attention to ceramics with the suggestion of her aunt Fahrelnisa Zeid, who
wanted to amuse her in the sanatorium in
The biggest
characteristic of the works of Füreya Koral is that she used the clay, the
principle material of ceramics, as an instrument in transmitting her original
interpretation. She didn’t content with the potter clay. She created works with
the “gre” clay that she found as a result of works in the oven adjusted to high
degrees. This attitude of her was not common even in the Western world until
the 1950s. The contemporary leadership of the artist was important in this
sense. Füreya Koral, who opened our ceramic art to the world with her works, also
brought the ceramic tile art to the Turkish architecture with a contemporary
interpretation. She made works especially on wall ornaments, board and
fireplace surfaces. She emphasized on the abstract expression styles of the
Eastern art. In addition to abstract elements, she turned towards surrealistic
and local characteristics occasionally and she carried the syntheses of Eastern
and Western art styles to a successful combination. In the 1960s, she canalized
to dark tones instead of the rich brilliant colors that she used in the 1950s. She
sporadically placed light discolorations reminding of animal and plant motives
onto these dark color areas. At the end of the 1960s, she canalized again to
brilliant colors. The artist put forward works that could be used in the daily
life such as ceramic panels, three dimension constructions, and many plastics
in the shape of animals, vases and plates. In 1960, she made a big panel for a
hotel in
The panels that she made
for the Ulus Market in Ankara and the Unkapanı Draper’s Market in 1963, for the
Ziraat Bank in Istanbul in 1966, for the Istanbul Divan Hotel, the Istanbul
Sheraton Hotel and the Faculty of Dentistry of the Ankara Hacettepe University
in 1969 could be counted among the other works of Füreya Korel. In 1973, she
made works that were convenient for the industry and she created dinner
services. She started to use the “houses” as a topic in the end of the 1970s. She
gave originality to these ceramics in the form of a cube by making holes on the
top of them and by using different colors. She realized a series of arrangement
on the subject of “Ceramic Houses: A Neighborhood” by bringing together some of
the houses. She decorated her houses with birds, trees and fishes. At the end
of the 1980s and in the beginning of the 1990s, she made figures of small
people “hollow, empty head” from terra-cotta.
Koral held approximately
forty exhibitions at home and abroad since 1951. Her works were exhibited in
Salon d’Octobre in
The writer Ahmet Hamdi
Tanpınar told “She tried to carry the
ceramic to other seasons starting from the beginning of her first experiences”
for her. The novelist Ayşe Kulin wrote a novel named “Füreya” inspired from her life. Füreya Koral, who also played in a
movie named “Gölge Oyunu”, made her second marriage with Kılıç Ali. Their
worlds were very different with Kılıç Ali, who sent her to the sanatorium for
treatment. The writer Altemur Kılıç was her step son.