Belkıs Mustafa

Who is Belkis Mustafa? (1896, Istanbul – 29 January 1925, Berlin)

Belkıs Mustafa is one of the first Turkish female painters and also the first Turkish woman to receive a diploma from İnas Sanayi-i Nefîse Mektebi. Belkıs Mustafa, the number 3 student of İnas Sanayi-i Nefîse Mektebi, originally comes from a family of Macedonian origin.

She was born in Istanbul in 1896 and has the distinction of being the first Turkish woman to receive a diploma in 1917 from the fine arts school she entered in 1914. Because he was a successful and talented student, he was sent to Germany for education by the Ministry of Education the year he graduated.

Here she completed the painting department of the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts and worked in the workshop of Lovis Corinth, one of the important names of the period. In his later years, he stayed in cities such as Munich, Amsterdam, Florence, Rome and Venice and studied European art closely; He had a great interest in Dutch Rembrandt.

In 1921, she returned to her country, that is, pre-Republican Turkey. In her artistic life, she focused on naked bodies and figurative paintings. She participated in exhibitions opened in Galatasaray. His work during these years was appreciated and encouraged by the intellectual segment of the country.

He was sent to Germany again in 1925, but died shortly afterwards at a young age and was buried in a Turkish grave near Tempeihof. Due to his short life, he was able to leave behind only a few works. He exhibited his works in Istanbul in the 1987s, with his brother preserving them.
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