The First Nudes

İzzet Zi̇ya
Young Man at the Studio, Undated
Oil on canvas
45 x 37 cm
Private Collection

Men were the first nudes in Turkish painting. The majority of these paintings were academic studies executed in oil paint; they were part of the education of artists that had finally attained the opportunity to work from the live model. The gender of the models constituted an obstacle in the way of characterizing these paintings as ‘nudes’. The ‘nude’ in Turkish painting was associated with the nudity of women. Although there is nudity in the paintings İzzet Ziya Bey showed as of the first Galatasaray Exhibition in 1916, his works, which often included male figures, were not categorized as ‘nudes’ despite the presence of nudity. The female nudes of Namık İsmail and İbrahim Çallı displayed for the first time at the Galatasaray Exhibition of 1922, on the other hand, were regarded as the beginning of a new period in art history. During this tumultuous period coinciding with the years of the Armistice (1918-1922), Ottoman artists also staged a grand revolution in the artistic sense.