Who is Hamit Görele? (1900-1980)
Born in Giresun’s Görele district in 1900, Hamit Görele studied primary and secondary school in Gümüşhane; He completed his high school education in Istanbul. He left the Engineering School, which he started in 1922, after 2 years and entered the Academy of Fine Arts.
After graduating from the Academy in 1928, he worked with Hikmet Onat and İbrahim Çallı; On the other hand, she started teaching art at the American Girls’ College and Galatasaray High School. In the same year, as a result of the second prize he received in the European Painting Competition, he was sent to France for education by the Ministry of Education; For his successes in Paris, he received a certificate of appreciation from the Ministry on February 16, 1929.
In the group exhibition opened at the Grand Galerie Moderne on Montparnasse Boulevard in 1930, his paintings Pharaoh’s Wife and Odalisque were included together with the works of important painters such as Cézanne, Matisse, Picasso, Bonnard and Lhote.
Görele, who worked in Andre Lhote’s workshop and Akademie Moderne for four years, returned to Turkey in 1933 and began to participate in the exhibitions of the Independent Painters and Sculptors Union and served as the president of the union. Between 1934 and 1940, he worked as an art teacher in Istanbul, Ankara and various parts of Anatolia and opened personal exhibitions.
Apart from the domestic and international exhibitions he attended, he tried to bring a modern personality to Turkish painting art with many writings, articles, criticisms and translations. The artist, who was appointed President of the Turkish Contemporary Painters Association in 1965, received the Artist of the Year award two years later.
Görele, one of the two painters who was given the State Certificate of Honor in 1978, received the achievement award at the State Painting and Sculpture Exhibition in 1980. The artist died on June 6, 1980, the same year.
Görele, who initially made paintings close to cubism under the influence of André Lhote, later shifted to impressionism and created constructivist works by combining non-figurative with geometric possibilities.