Who is Mustafa Gunen?

I was born in Kirsehir, a mid-Anatolian city, in 1956. After having suffered from poverty during my childhood, I finished primary school in Ankara. At that age I was highly intrigued by pencil drawing. By the time I finished primary school I had had several picture stories totalling two hundred pages. After primary school I was not able to continue my education due to financial problems and had to quit school. Then I started working as an apprentice in my father’s furniture workshop. Later, saving my tips, I bought synthetic paints and started making my first oil paintings.

We were living with our two married elder brothers in the same flat then, and I was not allowed to paint pictures on the pretext of smell of paint and with the fear that I would ignore my job. Sometimes this prohibition could become even tougher that my elder brothers would either mix the paints or empty the cans so that I couldn’t paint. However, they, after struggling for a long time, understood I would not give up and let me paint pictures in a small corner of our balcony. As I worked during the day, for years I had to paint in cold winter and hot summer nights till dawn. One day, an idea struck me: Why shouldn’t I paint pictures on the furniture? Such a thing had never been tried before at that time. The idea was met with some suspicion and some why-nots. At last I started painting pictures and some ornaments on the furniture. However, upon my father’s bankruptcy in 1970s during the severe economic crisis, I painted pictures only for my close friends as presents. This went on until 1993 when I met Dear Mr. Nevzat Boztas, a real art-lover and great art collector. With his sincere interest and encouragement I quit my job and shut down my workshop. Then I sold my flat to make a living and started painting as a future career.

As for my painting style, nature is my teacher. And in nature I chose the most difficult to achieve: SEA. My sole aim is to be the foremost artist at painting the sea and when people look at my paintings, I do not only want them to see them but also make them feel as if they were in them. And judging by what people say after looking at my paintings, I think I have made some remarkable progress on my way to reach this aim. Once a customer gave up buying a picture of rough sea, saying he felt seasick when he looked at and preferred a calmer picture. There were people expressing their feelings such as: “I felt salt water in my mouth,” “ I can smell the iodine spreading from the picture,” ; “For a moment I got lost in it and felt as if I were there and were having a holiday,” and so on. I am deeply honored by these remarks and they boost my hunger for painting better pictures.

Looking into the history of our Fine Arts or our daily life it is rather likely to encounter such devoted artists who could not continue their education due to various reasons. Most of these people have been unable to reflect that ever burning, never ending passion, enthusiasm, overflow of feelings and thoughts as they, throughout most of their lives, suffered from economic and social problems and strong coercion from their families. Some have been fettered by the merciless clamp of making their living and thus, they have made very little or no progress in their arts. Here, my dear friend Mustafa Günen is in this unfortunate category. However, he has challenged all the troubles that erected before him and tore them down. While watching his paintings of the sea, you name him a poet who uses his pen-like brush to express the crystal clear waters, the happiness of the screaming waves rushing towards the shores like a passionate lover running for his beloved. His way of presenting the infinite depths of the heaven with his tactful and artful brush, and of voicing the wrathful and furious attack of the waves with an indescribable color harmony are skills and the gift bestowed by the Lord that very few artists have. He is an invaluable, mature and well-bred artist who has employed the delightful waters of the Mediterranean, the legend whispering flows of Aegean, the mutinous and grisly skies of Black Sea, the maiden inlets of Marmara Sea despite cruel human invasion, the endless prairies of Anatolia as the source of his inspiration. He has deciphered the mysteries of the raging waves breaking against jagged rocks and of the dancing foams chanting soft tunes…

Naci TERZI
Collector and Art Consultant

It was my close friend Nevzat BOZTAS who introduced Mustafa GÜNEN who was, then, exhibiting his paintings in Gallery Selvin a few years ago. The paintings I had the opportunity to view at Nevzat’s home, frankly speaking, led me to get some surprising impressions of this artist whom I think is a real “auto-didact.” Most of large scale sea paintings of Günen’s reflect the calibre that could even make most of well-trained schooled artists jealous. When printed on paper those paintings can easily mislead one as to feel doubtful whether they are pictures or photographs which would invoke the thought of extreme artistic scrutiny at a very advanced technical level and when those paintings occupy the whole space of an art gallery, this artistic scrutiny, going beyond the limits of perfectionism, can hold the “delusive” reins of naturalist realism and make us think what it means for a “picture” if the reality depicted by a camera turns out to be pictorial fact. So, instead of blaming those who enjoy Günen’s paintings, isn’t it a more reasonable way to understand the logic that lies behind them? All in all, Mustafa Günen is also doing painting and this is his genre. The fact that his art has had no bonds with modern-intellectual genres or that he has had to suffer the risk of staying attached to his art style deserves an appreciative approach to his work of art.

Prof. Kaya ÖZSEZGIN
Faculty of Fine Arts, Hacettepe University, Ankara