The 50th anniversary of Neşet Günal’s art, one of the leading figures of realistic Turkish painting, is being celebrated with a major exhibition at the Istanbul Millî Reasürans Art Gallery, showcasing all periods of the artist’s career.

Rather than simply presenting a general overview of the artist’s lifelong creative output, the exhibition aims to highlight the stages he has gone through over his 50-year career and to emphasize the significance and meaning of his current artistic position for contemporary Turkish art.

In the book published alongside the exhibition, Kaya Özsezgin describes the work of 73-year-old Günal—who has continued to work with increasing intensity in recent years—as “an original world shaped by the determined line of an artist who constantly strives to surpass himself and pursue innovation.”

Neşet Günal was born in 1923 in Nevşehir and spent his childhood there. In 1939, he entered the Istanbul Academy of Fine Arts with a scholarship granted by the Municipality of Nevşehir. He graduated in 1946. Supported by a state scholarship, he studied mural painting and fresco in France and worked in Fernand Léger’s studio. He carried out studies in various European cities. Günal joined the Academy as an assistant in 1954, became a professor in 1970, served as Head of the Painting Department from 1975 to 1980, and as dean between 1980 and 1982. In 1983, he retired at his own request.

He held his first exhibition in 1955 at the well-known Helikon Gallery in Ankara. Over the next 35 years, until 1990, he organized two more exhibitions. The artist’s most productive period began after he left the Academy at the age of sixty. The extensive collection he gathered during the following fifteen years, both in Turkey and abroad, has now been brought together for public viewing.

Never forgetting the regions where he was born, Günal depicts the people of Central Anatolia, who endure harsh conditions on the steppe, through figures that highlight the unique and human qualities of these individuals. Just as socially engaged art in the Mexican mural tradition rejects provocative narratives, Günal avoids expressions that please the viewer; instead, he adopts a quiet mode of storytelling that distances the viewer from the people in his paintings, often causing a sense of uneasiness. These works confront society, nature, and the alienation of individuals from their environment and themselves, subtly criticizing the discomfort of the urbanized person.

At this point, Günal’s silent villagers, laborers, and rural figures transcend their limited geography and become representations of people around the world who survive under similarly difficult conditions—thus achieving universality.

Neşet Günal’s 50th-anniversary exhibition can be seen starting on October 8.