Nezih Çavuşoğlu
"For artist Nezih Çavuşoğlu, painting is the creator of added dimensions, reflections, and alternative solutions to life. His paintings primarily address the multicultural chaos of everyday life. Growing up in a multicultural society, Çavuşoğlu finds this natural to him. His paintings contain internal debates. Somehow, amidst the chaos, he seeks an alternative unity and a new balance to reorganize cultural differences. There is a struggle within the fragments as the remnants of the past, referenced by the background, converge with a new harmony on the foreground surface. Nezih Çavuşoğlu is a painter who has found artistic ways to reflect the dynamic and holistic existence of life, the endless flow of social change, creating aesthetically appealing and intellectually satisfying works. He defines his works as multivalent cultures that reflect the stages of his personal life without falling into the trap of being melancholic or nostalgic. His paintings depict his hometown, Istanbul. The flow of life in numerous streets, the texture of walls narrating the stories of civilizations, and the diverse cultures leaving their marks on the urban fabric of the metropolis are evident in Çavuşoğlu's use of color and texture."
Marcus Graf Curator
Nezih Çavuşoğlu was born in Istanbul in 1959. He completed his secondary education in England and his high school education in Switzerland. His interest in art began during his middle school years. In the summer of 1976, he visited the studios of many painters in Paris and participated in their work. One of them was the Italian artist Aldo Mondino. He pursued higher education at New England College in the United States, where he studied Marketing along with a Bachelor's degree program that included Visual Arts. He became a student of Farid Haddad, Marquerite Walsh, and the master artist Prof. Tomie De Paola in the Visual Arts Painting Department. Tomie De Paola had a significant impact on Çavuşoğlu and enabled him to specialize in color theory.
In his early years, Çavuşoğlu participated in numerous group exhibitions in Switzerland and the United States. In 1981, he returned definitively to Turkey and began studying and collecting Contemporary Turkish Art. He has made significant contributions to the development of Contemporary Turkish Painting and was included among the Patrons of Turkish Painting in the catalog published by Galeri Baraz in 2007.
While holding senior executive positions such as CEO, Management, and Executive Board Memberships in the fields of marketing, advertising, and communication, Çavuşoğlu continued to engage in art production and participate in various artistic environments. In 1998, he received the Crystal Apple Award from the Advertising Association for a TV commercial project he carried out with ADMAR Advertising Agency.
The artist's works have been exhibited in many international exhibitions, primarily in the United States, as well as in Spain, Portugal, France, and Germany. In 2017, a first took place when a dedicated institution organized a permanent exhibition titled "A Selection Collection" featuring the artist's works in a gallery setting. Being deeply immersed in Western art for years and having visited the world's leading museums and galleries multiple times, the artist also possesses an extensive library and archive focused on contemporary art.
Believing that the universality of art must draw inspiration from the geography it emerges from, Çavuşoğlu enriches the content of his own art by incorporating the colors, textures, and cultural heritage of the Marmara and Aegean regions. His works can be found in numerous private and institutional collections in the United States, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Greece, Lebanon, Egypt, and Turkey. He believes in the richness of the sources that fuel creative power, the transmission of the sincerity of the artwork within artistic competence and order, the action-oriented approach that defines one's identity, and the philosophical stance behind the artwork. In line with these beliefs, he continues to create artworks in his studios in Istanbul and Bodrum.
