Drawing the Pain

Abidin Dino is being commemorated with an exhibition titled “Drawing the Pain” at the Millî Reasürans Art Gallery on the tenth anniversary of his death.

The book prepared for the exhibition also includes the diary Abidin Dino kept while he was ill.

The exhibition can be viewed at the Millî Reasürans Art Gallery between October 15 and November 22, 2003.

Nazım Hikmet had asked Abidin Dino in one of his poems, “Can you paint a picture of happiness?” As far as is known, Abidin Dino did not paint a picture of “happiness”, but he painted a picture of pain, in his own words, “drew pain”.

Abidin Dino, who we lost in 1993, is being commemorated with extensive events and exhibitions at home and abroad on the 10th anniversary of his death.

The first leg of the Abidin Dino commemoration event in Turkey will begin with the exhibition “Drawing Pain” at the Millî Reasürans Art Gallery between October 15 and November 22. The artist’s retrospective exhibition in Paris will follow in November.

Born in Istanbul in 1913, Abidin Dino published his first works in the Artist magazine published by Fikret Adil. In the meantime, he illustrated and painted the covers of many books, including Nazım Hikmet’s books. The artist, who was in Group D, left this group and joined the Yeniler Group upon his return from St. Petersburg, where he went for cinema education. He settled in Paris in 1952. He established friendships with names from various branches of art such as T. Tzara, Picasso, Cocteau, Malraux, Mayerhold, and Aragon.

The 80 works to be exhibited at the Millî Reasürans Art Gallery are, in the words of Abidin Dino, “Drawing the Pain” paintings, which he made during his kidney surgery at the Saint-Charles Hospital in Montpellier in 1967. The decision to have the surgery, waiting for the surgery, finally the surgery and “drawing” afterwards are two of the most important things the artist could not give up during the difficult and painful period he experienced, the other of course being his wife Güzin Dino.

“Things got serious quickly. Medicines, injections, medicines injections, medicines given into the vein drop by drop are the most unpleasant of all, and how slowly they drip! On the one hand, the nurses and on the other hand, young assistants are entering and exiting my room. In between, I drew a few pictures with my needle-free hand, it felt good...”. “When I am Güzin, everything goes well. In Paris, on the train, in the hospital, with her childishly beautiful hands and eyes, she is always by my side, but she is exhausted. What should I do?”.

While Abidin Dino was living with pain in his body in the hospital, the Vietnam War continued outside, accumulating pangs of conscience in people. The news in the newspapers read in the twilight mornings of the hospital mixed the artist's physical pain with the pain of humanity. In his dreams, he goes back to the old days: “A journey through the tunnels up to my kidneys. It was unpleasant. Nighttime sleep is chaotic. I saw Tzara in my dream yesterday. We are in those strange rooms that I sometimes wander around. Low ceilings, intertwined. Old shabby things. A little Camondo Han, a little Schola Cantorum, I show Tzara around in the halls that you go down with steps. Tzara’s glasses, smiling eyes, his cigarette. We look out the window, from a very high, it is a faint and longing evening… But where is the city we see? Barcelona or what? Maybe I want to join the Spanish Civil War, maybe Tzara is preventing me and I can’t go, I stopped by the Grange Aux Belles, Tzara says ‘You are late, the defeat has begun’. Sadness. Evening has come. I am alone at the window. The drugs are strong. In autumn Paris.”

Finally, the surgery and the period of convalescence. The artist is allowed to go to Aix for a few days: “Here I am leaving the lines and starting to paint. Is the painting technique more intellectual, are the lines more reactive? I cannot associate color with pain. I am purified from pain in every canvas.”

After Abidin Dino recovered, the “paintings” he made in Aix in 1967 were exhibited at the Casanova Gallery in Paris and “disappeared.” As for the drawings, “I did not exhibit them, in fact I showed them to very few friends. Maybe because they had a “vital” quality rather than an “artistic” one.”

Abidin Dino is curious about the evaluations of his works and asks: “Beautiful or ugly, pictures or not, see these pain minutes I have drawn, what do you say?”

We believe that the nearly 80 “painful” paintings that will be presented together with a book on the 10th anniversary of his death will make the artist and art lovers happy again, although the reason is still not fully understood. Perhaps the reason for this happiness is that we can find expression in these paintings of the pain that accumulates in our minds, emotions, and most importantly in our conscience, as much as the pain we feel in our bodies, perhaps even more.

The exhibition can be viewed at the Millî Reasürans Art Gallery between October 15 and November 22, 2003.