THE CONSTANTINOPLE YEARS CONTENTS

Foreword Bahattin Öztuncay

9

Introduction Ebru Esra Satıcı, Şeyda Çetin

17

Alexis Gritchenko: Greetings to you, Istanbul! Dr. Vita Susak

35

In Pursuit of Alexis Gritchenko’s Years in Istanbul Dr. Ayşenur Güler

131

Artist’s Biography

303

Exhibited Works and Material

321 17 / INTRODUCTION

My principle is and will be: to live ever more and keep working against all odds.1 — Alexis Gritchenko, 1943

In the early 20th century, Moscow was an exciting city for an artist to be in. The Ukrainian born painter Alexis Gritchenko2 (1883–1977) was part of the modern art scene and exhibited with avant-garde artists including Kazimir Malevich, Wassily Kandinsky, Vladimir Tatlin and many others. Gritchenko was also an art critic and published articles, books; delivered public lectures, and taught in an art school. He decided to leave Russia to escape the civil war which followed the Russian Revolution of 1917. Leaving Moscow, he arrived in Istanbul in November 1919. Although the Ottoman capital was under occupation, it provided the artist with a relatively safe refuge for the years 1919–1921. Even during this time of difculty, Gritchenko remained a prolifc artist. He left Istanbul not only with numerous artworks but with memories and inspiration more than anything. After leaving Istanbul for Paris he published his memoirs, in Deux ans à Constantinople (Two Years in Constantinople) in 1930. This exhibition “Alexis Gritchenko – The Constantinople Years” considers Gritchenko’s Istanbul artworks in conjunction with his memoirs and embraces the artist’s book as a guide.

To explore Gritchenko’s art in light of his memoirs provides an insight into the artist’s character in addition to his style and technique. As a refugee who came to Istanbul with nothing but his winter coat, Gritchenko’s prose features occasional humor in spite of all the difculties. Surviving two winters in a foreign city with a humid climate he was not accustomed to, he never once lost his will to live or create. It is almost that Gritchenko’s persistent nature, fondness for Istanbul, and passion for art were an irresistible driving force. His positive attitude towards life would also seem to have contributed to his longevity. He lived until he was 94; longer than most of his contemporaries.

Although Gritchenko’s memoirs serve as an artist’s journal with casual optimism, they also tell the story of a refugee. Some sentences betray strong feelings of nostalgia and homesickness; now and then he likens parts of Istanbul to Ukraine, and mentions how details from certain neighborhoods resemble the scenes in old Russian icons. Sometimes his living conditions were so difcult that he openly laments that he only feels Homo sapiens when holding his brush in hand. Reading Gritchenko’s memoirs in an age where forced migration is a global issue resonates with the situation of displaced peoples today; even a century later. As an immigrant in the frst quarter of the 20th century, Gritchenko knew his settlement to be only temporary, just like many other émigré. He looked for ways to leave Istanbul in times of despair and even aspired to go to America for a while but seemed to have abandoned this idea without pursuing it.

In common with many avant-gardists, Gritchenko never trained in an art academy but instead achieved his artistic profciency by attending private art studios. He possessed, however, considerable knowledge and talent that made him welcome in the various

1 Gritchenko to René-Jean, 1943, 6, IX, Lettres à René-Jean, choisies et presentées par Sylvie Maignan et Jean Bergeron (Paris: Harmattan, 2014), 75. 2 Oleksa Vasylovytch Hryshchenko is transliteration of his name from Ukrainian, and Aleksei Vasilievitch Grishchenko from Russian. 26

Alexis Gritchenko, The Porters of the Golden Horn, lithograph, 35.6 × 38.1 cm, signed. Printed in 1975 after work from the 1920s. Ed. 106/200. Collection of The Ukrainian Museum, New York, USA. 31

April 28, 1920

“Yesterday I wandered through Istanbul, all along the Golden Horn. I made some sketches of hamals [porters]. What movement! How many images pass by, one after the other. I had a snack on the burnt ground to rest from the noise and din of the docks. I drew while contemplating the powerful contours of the aqueduct, forming an ancient block. Then I went down again and felt lost among the colorful sterns of barges and ships, where there is an indescribable hubbub, where there are desperate cries and calls, where the wind makes the ropes creak and the masts rattle, where tarpaulins and sails shake, where people crawl like crabs, clinging, falling, pushing, gripping the masts...”

—Alexis Gritchenko. Deux ans à Constantinople 34

Alexis Gritchenko, Golden Horn, March 1921, gouache on paper, 31.5 × 35.5 cm, signed and dated. Ömer Koç Collection. 48 / ALEXIS GRITCHENKO - THE CONSTANTINOPLE YEARS

Mosque, looked at the compositions through binoculars, sketched some parts of them, simplifying, highlighting the most important traits instead of copying them as his friend Dimitri (Mitia) Ismailovitch (1890–1976) did,42 commissioned by the Secretary of the American Embassy Gardiner Howland Shaw.43 Gritchenko pursued other goals: A comparison of the mosaic composition “Christ Heals the Apostle Peter’s Mother- in-Law” (Gospel of Matthew 8:14–17) and the light watercolor ‘translation’ done by Gritchenko makes for an eloquent example. It was important for him to capture the balance of color volumes, the emotion expressed in plastic ways, “not as a stencil copy of nature.”44 {p. 111}

The artist dedicated separate ‘hymns’ to Istanbul’s architecture. Massive Byzantine walls and churches presented a good opportunity for tectonic and color constructions that the founder of dynamocolor so loved. In his “Constantinople” {p. 95} the artist could unfold the distant square tower and numerous nearer buildings into fat, geometric shapes; there are no uncontrolled bright colors, no sloppiness; the whole surface is covered with ‘scars’ of minor strokes. The watercolor “Constantinople” that Gritchenko chose as the cover for his 1964 album looks almost purely abstract… almost. Just as he did in Moscow, the artist did not cross that border, so that the walls of houses, the blue sea far away, and sacred domes can be recognized in the fragments of work. {Fig. 7} He evenly flls with color large and small planes of his watercolors, and reproduces the greatness of simplicity by minimum means. Gritchenko always admired the laconism of icon painting, and this is refected in his composition with a view of the city where this icon painting originated.

The mosques and minarets of ‘Turkish Istanbul’ also attracted Gritchenko. In “Constantinople Skyline” he turned the abundant architecture of the megalopolis into one blue shadow. Its upper contour with ‘teeth’ and ‘shoots’ of minarets makes the silhouette of the city recognizable. {p. 280} In portraying the street, the artist sometimes submitted to the Eastern multi-coloredness, creating ‘arabesque’ Fig. 7 watercolors. {p. 92}. Later, in Paris, Gritchenko’s watercolors would be compared to Alexis Gritchenko, those of Raoul Dufy who visited Morocco in the mid-1920s. The artists knew one Constantinople, 1921. Cover of the Gritchenko another and Gritchenko dedicated a chapter of his memoirs to Dufy, but this happened monograph. Paris, 1964.

42 Dimitri Ismailovitch // Artists of Russian émigrés: http://www.artrz.ru, date of access: 26 December 2019. Dimitri Ismailovitch (1890–1976) was born in the town of Sataniv in central Ukraine. He received higher education at the military academy in St. Petersburg, and during World War I served at General Brusilov’s headquarters. After the October Revolution, he came to Kyiv and studied at the Ukraine Academy of Art for one year. He came to Istanbul in the same year as Gritchenko, in 1919, but stayed there until 1927 and initiated the founding of the Russian-Turkish Artists’ Society. Later he travelled to New York, and eventually moved to Rio de Janeiro. He worked as a portraitist. 43 Nadia Podzemskaia, “A propos des copies d’art byzantin à Istanbul: les artistes russes émigrés et l’Institut Byzantin d’Amérique,” Histoire de l’art 44 (June 1999): 127–128. 44 Gritchenko, Deux ans à Constantinople, 194. 51

Fig. 9 Alexis Gritchenko, The Dervishes, 1920. Deux ans à Constantinople. Paris: Quatre Vents, 1930. 69

Alexis Gritchenko, Istanbul Blue and Rose, October 1920, watercolor and pencil on paper, 29 × 25 cm, signed and dated. Ömer Koç Collection. 82

Alexis Gritchenko, Turkish City, December 1920, watercolor and pencil on paper, 19.5 × 23 cm, signed and dated. Ömer Koç Collection. Alexis Gritchenko, Scene in Istanbul, March 1921, pencil, gouache and oil on paper, 35 × 34 cm, signed and dated. Ömer Koç Collection. 326

ALEXIS GRITCHENKO - THE CONSTANTINOPLE YEARS

This book has been published EXHIBITION PUBLICATION on the occasion of the exhibition “Alexis Gritchenko – Curators Authors The Constantinople Years” Şeyda Çetin Ayşenur Güler at Meşher Istanbul, Ebru Esra Satıcı Vita Susak February 07 – May 10, 2020. Consultants Curators First edition, 2020: 750 copies Ayşenur Güler Şeyda Çetin ISBN: 978-975-??? Vita Susak Ebru Esra Satıcı

MEŞHER MEŞHER Editor İstiklal Caddesi No: 211 Bahattin Öztuncay Nilüfer Şaşmazer Beyoğlu 34433 İstanbul, Türkiye Károly Aliotti www.mesher.org Nazlı Efsa Aktar Copy-editing Ezgi Göksu Öztürkmen Mary Işın Publisher Mert Gözören Stephen Oliver VEHBİ KOÇ VAKFI Iraz Polat Nakkaştepe Azizbey Sokak No: 1 Deniz Sanal Proofreading Kuzguncuk 34674 İstanbul, Türkiye Sevim Tavus Özge Ertem www.vkv.org.tr Certificate No: 34721 Design and Execution Design Nilüfer H. Konuk Esen Karol Copyright © Meşher, Vehbi Koç Foundation, Translation Translation and authors 2020 Çiğdem Asatekin Yiğit Adam Ali Berktay Beyza Altay All rights are reserved. No part of this Claire Cahm Çiğdem Asatekin publication may be produced, stored in Ali Berktay a retrieval or transmitted in any form or Production İvan Pavlii by any means, electrical, mechanical or Birim Metal, Serhat Öztemir Serra Yentürk otherwise, without seeking the written Çur Dekor, Akın Karaçur permission of the copyright holders Denge Alçı, Gülali Gügercinoğlu Transcription from Ottoman Turkish and the publishers. The authors of this Lamarts Fineart Baskı Atölyesi Vural Genç book acknowledge that the work is Güven Çerçeve, Bülent Güven Ekrem Sırma their original creation and that all the Klik Studio, Gülay Ayyıldız Yiğitcan Bengü Vahapoğlu opinions are their own and no one else ND Reklam, İbrahim Eskiköy can be held accountable for them, and Sergikur Paper that there are no parts in their works SG Yapım, Sabri Yanık Munken Pure 115 gsm that could infringe upon the rights of Umut Cam, İsmail Gelik third parties. Fonts Technology Sponsor Merriweather Work on the cover: Arçelik Merriweather Sans Alexis Gritchenko, Ardeco Hagia Sophia, 1920, Video Credits watercolor and pencil on paper, Reuters, via British Pathé Artworks Photography 26 × 20.5 cm, signed. The Byzantine Institute and Hadiye Cangökçe Ömer Koç Collection. Dumbarton Oaks Fieldwork Vivian van Blerk Records and Papers Aras Selim Bankoğlu International Committee of the Volodymyr Gritsyk Red Cross Photo Service, Montreal, Kanada Rostyslav Sekunda Lighting Kemal Yiğitcan Color Separation Hüseyin Çetin Transportation Menderes Coşkun Simurg Finearts Logistics Print Insurance MAS Matbaacılık San. ve Tic. AŞ Ram Sigorta Hamidiye Mah. Soğuksu Cad. No: 3 Kağıthane, 34408, İstanbul, Türkiye T: +90 212 294 10 00 [email protected] Sertifika no: 44686