Written by: İbrahim Karaoğlu
When the sun enters the autumn sign, its scent gradually diminishes in summer. The emotions and colors of nature preparing for a long sleep transform into new images. Like every season, autumn takes on its own unique colors, light, and scents. Migratory birds heading south, the drawn-out looks of the clouds and the colors changing towards where they drift, the yellow and red smiles of some trees; the black, yellow, purple, pink, blue, […]
When the sun enters the autumn sign, its scent gradually diminishes in summer. The emotions and colors of nature preparing for a long sleep transform into new images. Like every season, autumn takes on its own unique colors, light, and scents. Migratory birds heading south, the drawn-out looks of the clouds and the colors changing towards where they drift, the yellow and red smiles of some trees; the eyes of the black, yellow, purple, pink, blue, amber, ruby colors that wake up in the autumn, looking at each other and ripening fruits…
The heartfelt silence of nature gratefully attached to summer, the bareness and tiredness of the trees that shed their leaves early; the sky decorated with children’s colorful kites…
Although I feel like Albert Camus who said, “Autumn is a second spring where every leaf is a flower,” autumn still fills me with sadness. And when I say autumn, I remember Paul Sartre’s aphorism, “Nothingness haunts existence.”
Since we lost one of the great masters of our art of painting, painter Mustafa Ayaz, this autumn, a great sadness has been circulating inside me.
There is an aphorism by existentialist thinker Martin Heidegger that I love very much: “Life is a story. And to love a person is to love their story.” We all loved the story of painter and Prof. Mustafa Ayaz. Because his story was the enlightenment story of the Republic. He was the hero of a magnificent story with his original, unique, not like anyone else, but his own art. Ayaz was a universal artist. He was not only ours, he was everyone's painter. His life was his art. Painter Mustafa Ayaz was a great master who created his paintings with his own unique images. He had a very special grammar of painting. He would touch life with the tip of his brush, with his dreams. His palette was always wet. He would forget sounds and words; he would only speak with colors, he would think with colors. He would translate his dreams and feelings with colors. The serenity of yellow, the tension of red, the mysticism of green, the sadness of purple, the boundlessness of blue, the sensual vibration of orange would move the inside of his painting. If it were not for colors, he would remain silent and apathetic.
His was to reach the dream to the truth, the truth to the dream. He would complete each painting by putting the unforgettable things in order. His paintings would offer the taste of a diary that was read with pleasure.
His passion was to reach everything beautiful. He would endlessly bring to life beautiful women, the most rhythmic moments of life, dance figures, and enthusiastic life processes in his paintings.
A great artist has passed from this world. But he will always live in our memory. “Because memory is the only heaven from which good people cannot be expelled.” This is how Jean Paul defines memory. And I believe in this very much. As Albert Camus said in his book The Myth of Sisyphus, an artist lives twice, “To create is to live twice.” Because. My dear teacher Mustafa Ayaz will always live in the artistic memory of our culture with his works…
He drew his own figure as a motif in almost every painting and this figure became an icon over a long period of time: It became the seal of his own painting. We will always remember him every time we look at his painting. As Gibran says, “To remember is to meet.” We will always remember him and we will always meet him.
He had told us years ago; The Ankara Opera Bridge, designed by Italian engineer Nervi and having a twin called Risorgimento in Verona, Italy, resembles more of a “city sculpture” than a bridge with its different design and is one of the important city icons of the capital. Mustafa Ayaz Hoca also had a great contribution to the story of the construction of the bridge in 1972. They had a hard time finding personnel to have the application project of the foot molds of the Opera Bridge drawn by Nevri done. When Ayaz Hoca heard this, he said, “I will do it” and did it. In return for this service, the mold boards were given to him. He built his shanty house in Şentepe with those boards. When he recounted those days, he said, “When I built my shanty house in Yenimahalle-Şentepe in 1974, the world was mine. Now both my family and my paintings had a home. I had also designed a relief on the garden wall so that the surroundings would turn into an artistic space. Thus, my shanty house would live on as Mustafa Ayaz’s house of art rather than being ordinary. I used the basement of the house as a workshop. I also created my most beautiful works there. Years passed. My paintings increased and increased. Then in 2002, I felt the need to create a museum in my name in a contemporary sense,” said Ayaz Hoca, feeling great peace as he told these. And the Mustafa Ayaz Foundation Plastic Arts Museum opened 15 years ago. His dreams blossomed. That museum is the memory space of his memories and works. He will always live in the hearts of visitors and will always glorify Ayaz Hoca.
I bow respectfully before his memory.
Rest in peace, my teacher.
Source: https://karanfildergi.com.tr/buyuk-usta-mustafa-ayaz-kendi-resminin-muhru/