Nejad Devrim (Galeri Nev)
Nejad Devrim was born in 1923; His father was the writer and bureaucrat İzzet Melih, and his mother was the painter Fahrelnisa Zeid. Between 1936 and 1938 he lived in Berlin with his mother and brother Şirin; He discovered Western painting in the museums of Germany. While still a student at Galatasaray High School in 1939, he painted under the influence of Matisse and Bonnard. He entered the Istanbul State Academy of Fine Arts in 1941; He became Léopold Lévy's student first and then his assistant. During his student years, he became interested in Byzantine mosaics, Ottoman calligraphy and abstract Islamic arts, which would later feed his art. He was among the founding members of the Yeniler Group. He settled in Paris in 1946; He soon became one of the young artists invited to the meetings of Alice Toklas. He participated in the Salon de Mai and Salon de Réalités Nouvelles exhibitions for many years in a row. In 1950, his solo exhibition was opened at Galerie Lydia Conti in Paris, where the works of artists such as Hartung, Soulages and de Staël were exhibited. In the same year, Nejad was among the "Paris School" painters chosen by Leo Castelli to exhibit his works in New York; Nejad's works were later seen in the Paris School exhibitions held regularly every year at Galerie Charpentier. He was a founding member and president of the Salon d'Octobre in 1952; wrote his papers. In 1955, he designed the poetry books of Tristan Tzara and Paul Eluard. Art travels, which included France, England, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, America, Central Asia and the Soviet Union, became one of the main sources of inspiration. In 1985, he sparsely traveled and retired to Nowy-Sacz in southern Poland. Nejad Devrim died in 1995 in Nowy-Sacz. The retrospective exhibition organized by Galeri Nev after his death was opened in Istanbul in 2001 and in Ankara in 2002. In 2006, the works of Nejad Devrim and his mother, Fahrelnisa Zeid, were viewed in the exhibition titled "Two Generations in the Rainbow" held at the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art. In 2018, Galeri Nev compiled all the information, documents and photographs that can be found on the artist's life in the exhibition "Nejad's Greatest Virtue Is Nejad".