Prof. Mustafa Aslıer (1925-2015)

INTERVIEW WITH ASLIER

 

 ''MY METAL ENGRAVING ''

 

 

TEACHER SCHOOL AND Gazi Education Institute, my relationship with the art of engraving or print and painting art began. We were doing print and painting experiments with linol or wood engraving technique. The paintings that impressed me in my twenties were the engravings of Rembrandt or Goya, where I saw similar prints in the books.

 

However, there were neither presses nor materials related to these techniques. With the help of the dictionary, I more or less learned the techniques from French books. Since I could not find the metal mold sheet, I made pit print experiments with linoleum sheets given from the picture-work section.

 

I used the molds I created by scraping Linol's face and polishing it, then scraping and applying sodium hydroxide solution with the help of a brush. I achieved results in aquatinta taste. Sodium hydroxide had to work very fast because it melted the brush. I made the prints on the skin press. However, due to the lack of material, these works could not go beyond technical trials.

After the Printing Department moved to Istanbul in 1951, I had the opportunity to make a pit from Zinc molds. I used plate zinc as a mold and stone press as a press. As I had to do all the illustrations of three weekly magazines in the Cağaloğlu market in addition to my teaching in 1951-1953, there was little time left for art experiments.

In October 1954, when I was sent to Germany to study Graphic Arts on behalf of the state, I got rid of technical and material impossibilities. On the one hand, guest student at the University of Munich; After 1954, I got involved in an intensive study program at the Graphic Arts College of Stuttgart, such as Graphic Techniques Engineering. However, this intense program did not force me because of the art and art history education I had at the Gazi Education Institute Painting-Work Department and the physics, chemistry and mathematics education I had previously been successful in the teacher school. For this reason, I continued my private art experiments with the workshops of the Academy of Graphics and the Academy.

During this period, I had the opportunity to examine original prints and prints of many old and new artists in galleries and museums.

During these years, the contemporary western art with classic images from the conflict affected my training experience I've had in Turkey I received the shock. Leo Schobinger, my graphic professor at the Academy of Graphics, at the opening of my exhibition at the Gallery Senatore; "How many years have you been here and you have not been affected by our art, why?" asked a question. "I'm trying to absorb the effect," I replied. He would neither praise nor eat my works. He was not a very famous artist either.

More Professor I would attach importance to Staehle's evaluations. Because he would take care of what he did soon and invite me to his own workshop. We also produced a hand-printed book called "At the Police Station" for collaboration with him. We continue to send one small original print image to each other at the beginning of each year.

 

In 1957, I learned that a School of Applied Fine Arts was opened to education in Istanbul. Adolf Schneck, one of the retired professors of the Stuttgart Academy, was tasked with preparing his institutions and programs and forming his teaching staff with the artists he chose from Germany. It was also decided to take part in Applied Fine Arts.

 

When we came to 1962, manufacturing and imports were realized. In addition, I ensured that a ton of lead letters required for free typographic shaping are obtained from abroad and domestically. In those years, the School of Applied Arts' in that it was only a fully equipped workshop in Turkey these workshops. After I was elected as the director of the School of Applied Fine Arts in 1971, I imported a new and modern equipment from Germany by donation for screen printing works that were carried out with primitive tools until that year.

 

Until I established my private workshops, we worked with my students and guest artists in this workshop. Today, an important death of our younger artists, who have reached the age of fifty and have a reputation, have started their first original print-painting trials in this workshop and have become increasingly skilled.

 

In the 1970s, I opened my first private print painting workshop in Beşiktaş and the second in my home on Marmara Island.

I have a total of three pit presses (40x100cm., 60x120cm. And 75x150cm. Print lengths) in my two workshops.

In 1962-1972, I worked mostly with pit printing technique. I have tried all the technical possibilities of the technique, such as multi-colored, aquatinta high-pit co-printing, and have tried it to my students. I can say that I developed my personal language more easily with these techniques.

 

As a painter who is both easy to draw and symbolic to shape, the possibilities of the pit printing technique paved the way for a richer expression for me. I could stay and do whatever I wanted in the creation process.

Metal carving-printing paintings constitute the majority of the works I have produced in my art life. It is necessary to watch the development stages of my personal art piece in these printed pictures.

 

It is easy to find verbal rationales and defenses for the resulting works. Theories that have an unheard of influence can be developed with words. The main thing is the authenticity of the visual worlds that the works create separately and together. The formation of the art object depends on reaching organic integrity as much as natural objects. I think all artworks are symbols that convey the message of the creative event to the other people of the artist. In the art of painting, the work should reach the level of the icon object without reducing the contribution of the visual elements to the work.

 

The work that has reached this level is considered to have taken its independent form to time and space. In my works, I saw that the basic simplicity increases the creative fertility, and the excessive item wealth leads to confusion and corruption.

In people whose thoughts and value judgments are constantly changing within the time-space relationship, the work that can create an intellectual concreteness can be freed from time-space dependence. Time constantly changes the place where the work occurs. Based on this, every artist looks for a new time and place.

With the integration of the work elements, it becomes independent of objectivity and the time and place in which the artist was born. Because he created his own space, which is no longer affected by time.