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DriveModern ceramics biography

Füreya Koral was one of the pioneers of modern studio ceramics in Türkiye. Besides vessels and sculptures, she made large ceramic wall panels for hotels, universities and other public buildings, bringing clay into spaces people use every day.

Füreya Koral

ArtBiography

The story behind the card

Koral was born in Istanbul in 1910 into a family of artists and writers: the painters Fahrelnissa Zeid and Aliye Berger were her mother's sisters, and the writer Cevat Şakir Kabaağaçlı, known as the Fisherman of Halicarnassus, was her mother's brother. She turned to ceramics while being treated for tuberculosis in a Swiss sanatorium in the late 1940s, took a ceramics course in Lausanne in 1949 and held her first solo exhibition in Paris in 1951. In 1953 she opened a studio in the Harbiye district of Istanbul, which became a meeting place for artists. Her panels include work for the Marmara Hotel at Atatürk Forest Farm in Ankara (1959) and for Hacettepe University's Faculty of Medicine (1965). She died in 1997.

Türkçe oku
Füreya Koral, Türkiye'de modern atölye seramiğinin öncülerindendir. Kap ve heykellerin yanı sıra oteller, üniversiteler ve başka kamu binaları için büyük seramik duvar panoları yaptı; seramiği insanların her gün kullandığı mekânlara taşıdı.

Koral 1910'da İstanbul'da, sanatçı ve yazarlarla dolu bir ailede doğdu: ressamlar Fahrelnissa Zeid ile Aliye Berger teyzeleri, Halikarnas Balıkçısı olarak tanınan yazar Cevat Şakir Kabaağaçlı da dayısıydı. 1940'ların sonunda İsviçre'de bir sanatoryumda verem tedavisi görürken seramiğe yöneldi; 1949'da Lozan'da bir seramik kursuna katıldı, ilk kişisel sergisini 1951'de Paris'te açtı. 1953'te İstanbul'da, Harbiye'de kurduğu atölye sanatçıların buluşma yerine dönüştü. Panoları arasında Ankara'da Atatürk Orman Çiftliği'ndeki Marmara Oteli (1959) ile Hacettepe Üniversitesi Tıp Fakültesi (1965) için yaptıkları sayılabilir. 1997'de öldü.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Füreya Koral
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