Füreya Koral


Füreya Koral is one of the pioneering ceramics artists in Turkey. Known for her wall panels, Koral worked in a variety of media such as tiles, statuettes, plates, and also created household items. She started working on ceramics after she was diagnosed with tuberculosis, while receiving treatment at a sanatorium in Switzerland. She was a self-taught artist and her works were mostly ignored during her lifetime. Seeking to push the limits of ceramics beyond its function, she was inspired by the art of ancient civilizations of Turkey, Mexico and East Asia—Japan in particular. Her work is commonly known to carry a mix of Western and Eastern artistic elements.

Early life

Füreya Koral was born in Büyükada, Istanbul. Her father was Emin Paşa who was a notable soldier and statesman in the Ottoman Empire. Similar to her aunts Fahrelnissa Zeid, Aliye Berger, Ayşe Erdem, and her uncle Cevat Şakir Kabaağaçlı, Koral was keen on music, painting and literature.
She studied at the Lycée Notre Dame de Sion Istanbul until her final year, and then received her diploma from the Private Jewish High School in 1928. She enrolled at the Department of Philosophy at the Istanbul University Faculty of Literature in 1929. Because of her father’s illness and mandatory retirement, the financial situation of the family declined, and she quit university before graduating.
In 1930, she moved to Bursa after marrying the farm owner Selahattin Karacabey. The couple divorced in 1932. She made her second marriage to Kılıç Ali in 1935, who was a close friend of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Following Atatürk's passing, the couple moved back to Istanbul.
She helped her older sister, artist Fahrelnissa Zeid open her first solo exhibition at her home at the Ralli Apartment Block in 1945. Immediately after the exhibition, Koral was diagnosed with tuberculosis.

Artistic practice

1947–1954
Koral began her treatment at the Leysin Sanatorium in Switzerland, where she took painting lessons from a Polish artist. Later, she began to experiment with ceramics with the materials her aunts Fahrelnissa Zeid and Aliye Berger sent to her. In 1949, she attended a ceramics workshop in Lausanne. In 1950, she moved to Paris where her treatment resumed. In Paris, she crossed paths with the ceramics artist Georges Serré and upon his recommendation, she began working on firing techniques at a workshop outside of Paris. She also met the art critics Jacques Lassaigne and Charles Estienne who both advised Koral to open an exhibition.
The artist opened her first solo exhibition at Galerie M.A.I. in Paris. This was followed by her first solo exhibition in Turkey at the Maya Gallery founded by Adalet Cimcoz. The exhibition featured wall ceramics inspired by the çini tradition, also other works that treated folkloric themes.
She returned to Istanbul in 1953 and established one of the first private ceramic studios in Turkey at the El Irak Apartment Building that she shared with her husband.
1954–1980
After divorcing Kılıç Ali, Koral moved her home and studio to the entrance floor of the Şakir Pasha Apartment Building. Her studio became a meeting place for young ceramic artists in the 1950s, including Ayda Arel, Alev Ebüzziya Siesbye and Leyla Sayar, as well as Bingül Başarır, Candeğer Furtun, Binay Kaya, and Mehmet Tüzüm Kızılcan. Koral's studio served as a gathering point for the important figures in arts and culture of this period, including many prominent writers such as Melih Cevdet Anday, Azra Erhat, Sabahattin Eyüboğlu, Vedat Günyol, Yaşar Kemal, Cevat Şakir Kabaağaçlı and Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar.
In 1957, Füreya was invited to the U.S. through a Rockefeller grant, and she continued her journey to Mexico to carry out research on the Aztec and Mayan cultures. The widespread mural tradition of Mexico reinforced Koral’s belief that art should not be incarcerated in museums and paved the way for the large panels she would make for public spaces.
Upon her return to Istanbul in 1958, the artist designed ceramic coffee cups for the Pavilion of Turkey at the Expo '58 Brussels World Fair. She continued her collaborations with architects, ranging from Utarit Izgi to Haluk Baysal, Melih Birsel, Abdurrahman Hancı, and Selçuk Milâr. She created large-scale panels for the Marmara Hotel on the grounds of the Atatürk Forest Farm in 1959; the Hacettepe University Faculty of Medicine in 1965; Ziraat Bank, Başak Insurance building, and Istanbul Textile Traders’ Market in 1966; the Anafartalar Market in 1967; and the Divan Hotel in 1968.
In the 1970s, she focused on designing objects using stoneware technique, and created an exclusive series for the Istanbul Porcelain Factory in Tuzla in 1973. The same year, Koral’s works were exhibited at Yapı Endüstri Merkezi .
1980–1997
Koral was Chair of the Ceramicists Association founded in 1980. However the Association was shut down under martial law following the 1980 coup d'état. The artist produced the series Houses—one of her best known works—between 1980–85. Exhibited at Macka Art Gallery in Istanbul in 1985, these works were later awarded the Sedat Simavi Visual Arts Prize. In 1990, Koral exhibited terracotta figurines titled Walking People, alongside works by forty artists who joined the exhibition With Respect to Fureya Koral on her 40th Year in Art, organized by Macka Art Gallery. The artist died in 1997.

Exhibitions

"... For me ceramic art, first of all is like a tool, or a book, or music. A tool to express the world, to make my own world come alive, a tool that makes living and sharing possible. I mean ceramics are not just decorative items or objects of consumption."
Koral participated in exhibitions at numerous galleries and institutions, including Salon d'Octobre, Paris; the Museum of Modern Art, Mexico City; Naprstkovo Museum, Prague; and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. among others.
Opened in the fall of 2017, Koral's posthumous retrospective included over 200 artworks, presented along with archival materials such as letters and photographs. Organized by Károly Aliotti, Nilüfer Şaşmazer and Farah Aksoy, the exhibition aimed to present a comprehensive study of her work, which has been overshadowed by the artist’s gender and family’s significant background in late Ottoman history and Turkey.