İbrahim Çallı

Painter

Education
Sanayi-i Nefise Mektebi (Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University)

Painter (B. Çal/Denizli, 1881 – D. Istanbul, 1960). He completed her primary and secondary education in Çal and İzmir. He took her first painting lectures in Istanbul to where he came for entering military school in 1899 and do various works from a teacher who gave painting lectures to students of Vefa High School. Later he learnt painting from the painter Ruben Efendi who worked in Grand Bazaar. He met meanwhile İzzettin Bey, son of Şeker Ahmet Pasha, and with his encouragement he entered in 1906 Sanayi-i Nefise Mektebi (Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University). He completed this school with a first whose education actually lasted six years (1909).

The next year he won a competition organized by the Ministry of Education with his paintings titled “Çıplak Adam” and “Harekat Ordusu'nun Muhafız Alayı'ndan Maksut Çavuş”. He was sent to France with a scholarship together with Hikmet Onat, Ali Sami Boyar, and Ruhi Arel. He studied painting in the workshop of Fernand Cormon in Paris Fine Arts Higher School for four years. Upon the start of the First World War he returned home and started to work as the assistant of Vallaury in Fine Arts Academy. After a while he was assigned to teacher of workshop. In 1917 upon the order of Enver Pasha, War Minister, he worked together with people such as Hikmet Onat, Ruhi Arel, Avni Lifij and Namık İsmail in Şişli in the workshop founded for purposes of making war paintings. He taught painting in Istanbul State Fine Arts Academy in the workshop opened into his name until being retired in 1947. He contributed to the education of numerous painters including Şeref Akdik, Refik Epikman, Elif Naci, Mahmut Cuda, Muhittin Sebati, Ali Çele­bi and Zeki Kocamemi. He was one of the founders of the Fine Arts Union.

Çallı is one of the most original representatives of the painter group called "1914 generation", "Turkish impressionists" or rather known as "Çallı generation" in Turkish painting. The group consisting of impressionist painters such as Nazmi Ziya Gören, Hikmet Onat, Ruhi Arel, Avni Lifij and Namık İsmail opened their first painting exhibition called “Galatasaray Exhibitions” which aroused great interest. Çallı under the influence of the Russian painter Alexis Grichenko who was in 1927 in İstanbul shifted away from impressionist technique and adopted his schematic design close to graphics and less complicated color understanding. His series called Mevleviler came into being under this influence. After a short while Çallı returned to impressionist understanding and remained loyal to it until the end of his life. This understanding which is based on a transformed shape of real impressionism is also called “academic”.

He realized productions in pays age, portrait, still life and domestic styles. First samples of nü (nude genre) which was not available in Turkish painting until that time belong to him. His work titled Türk Topçularının Mevzie Girişi (Mimar Si­nan University Museum of Painting and Sculpture, 1917) is one of the first large sized compositions of Turkish painting. He painted in the first period of his artistic career (1914-23) balls, island trips, nude women figures and famous people around him. Products of this period carry a certain concern of balanced composition. In them there is a palette free of dark colors such as black and brown and a free brush work.

After 1923 aside from paysage and still life works, he made paintings about Atatürk revolutions and especially Independence War. He relatively shifted away from impressionist technique and adopted a more traditional approach in his works İstik­lal Savaşı'nda Zeybekler (1923), Atatürk Portresi (1935), Süvariler (1936), Hatay'ın Anavatana Hasreti (1938) which are in the Museum of Painting and Sculpture of Mimar Sinan University. In his last years he made still life paintings such as Manolyalar etc. which were his most famous works. 

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