Ali Nijat Sirel was a sculptor who took part in the early Republic's transfer of monumental sculpture in Turkey from foreign hands to Turkish ones. Born in Amasya and trained in Munich, he worked in Istanbul both as a teacher and as director of the Academy of Fine Arts. His best-known work is the equestrian Atatürk Monument in Bursa, made with the help of Mahir Tomruk and unveiled on 29 October 1931. His name appears in the sources sometimes as Nijat, sometimes as Nejat or Nijad; that the same man is meant is clear from the matching names of his parents and the matching lists of his works.

What we know of his life is scattered. The sources disagree on his year of birth, on the name of his teacher in Munich, on the dates of some of his works, on his marriage and on what became of his memory after his death. These contradictions are noted where they arise, not smoothed over; the firmest ground available is Derya Uzun Aydın's article of 2013, the references to Nurullah Berk's book Türk Heykeltraşları (Turkish Sculptors), published in 1937, and the death notices that appeared in the newspaper Cumhuriyet in 1959.

The Road from Amasya

Nijat Sirel was born in Amasya. Most sources agree on his parents' names: his father was İbrahim Şazi Bey and his mother Yennevveva. The year of his birth is another matter. Derya Uzun Aydın's article gives 1898, while the artist cards of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and many biographical texts give 1897. No civil register entry or document that would settle the question appears in the texts available to us. For this reason the chronology below leaves the year of birth as "1897 or 1898".

The family had a second artist. His elder sister Harika Sirel (Şazi Sirel) was a painter and the wife of the painter Hüseyin Avni Lifij; one biographical source gives her date of birth as 7 April 1896. Drawing on Berk and Gültekin Elibal, Aydın writes that Nijat Sirel learned his first colours and his first attempts at line from his brother-in-law Avni Lifij. Yet no document has been found on his childhood years in Amasya, the first stages of his schooling or the family's departure from the city. Hüseyin Hüsameddin's Amasya Tarihi (History of Amasya) likewise contains no record of Şazi Bey, the Sirel family or the artist himself; the sources say only that he was born in Amasya, and it appears that he continued his education in Istanbul.

According to one biographical essay, the family decided after high school that Nijat Sirel should become a sculptor. The author finds this decision remarkable, since sculpture was then still regarded as sinful, even forbidden. The institutional history of sculpture teaching in Turkey does not, in any case, go back very far. The Sanayi-i Nefise Mektebi (School of Fine Arts) had been founded in 1882 under Abdülhamid II, with Osman Hamdi Bey as its director, and modelled on the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris; it began teaching on 2 March 1883 with eight teachers and twenty students, in departments of painting, sculpture, architecture and engraving. The first teacher of the sculpture department was the Rome-trained Yervant Osgan, who held the post until his retirement in 1914. Among the sculptors who emerged from this milieu before the founding of the Republic are counted İhsan Özsoy, İsa Behzat, Mahir Tomruk and Nijat Sirel. According to Necmettin Yağçı, these four produced their mature work in the Republican period and also took on the task of training the artists who would carry Turkish sculpture to the next generations.

The Istanbul Sultani and Munich

Nijat Sirel completed his schooling at the Istanbul Sultani (today's Istanbul Boys' High School). In 1915 he was sent to Germany to study sculpture. One account describes this as a posting on a state scholarship; another says that he did not study at the Sanayi-i Nefise and went at his own expense. Some scholars, on the other hand, count him among the graduates of the Sanayi-i Nefise. The accounts contradict each other and the matter cannot be considered settled. The year of his departure fell in the middle of the First World War, when the Ottoman Empire and Germany were allies; among the Turkish artists who studied in Germany between 1915 and 1930 are also listed names such as Mahir Tomruk, Ratip Aşir Acudoğu, Nusret Suman and Cemal Tollu.

In Germany he studied at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. Turkish sources name his teacher as Professor Hermann Kahn, but also spell the name Kahhn or Hahn; the artist card of the Ankara Painting and Sculpture Museum likewise presents him as a pupil of Prof. Kahn. Aydın's article gives the following information about this teacher: born in 1868 at Kloster Veilsdorf, he studied at the Munich academy in 1887-92 and then taught there, was influenced by Hildebrand, and was an artist in whom classical influences predominated; his important works include a Moltke monument of 1909 and the Goethe monument in Chicago. All of this matches the biography of the German sculptor Hermann Hahn. Hahn was born on 28 November 1868 at Kloster Veilsdorf, studied at the school of applied arts and the academy in Munich in 1887-1892, was appointed professor at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts in 1902, and is known as a teacher who passed on Adolf von Hildebrand's neoclassical outlook to the next generation; his Moltke monument in Bremen dates from 1909 and his Goethe monument in Chicago from 1913. Judging by this correspondence, Sirel's teacher was most probably Hermann Hahn, and the spelling "Kahn" must have arisen from a misreading or a slip in transmission; this is our own inference, and we have not seen any document recording Sirel's enrolment in Hahn's studio. The date of death also differs: Aydın gives 1942 and Munich, while German sources state that Hahn died at Pullach on 18 August 1945.

After working independently for a short time following Munich, Sirel returned home in 1922. Mahir Tomruk, who was in Munich in the same years, had worked in the studios of Prof. Kurtz and Blecker; the sources do not say whether the two artists knew each other in Germany, but in later years they would work side by side on the Bursa monument.

Years as a Teacher

On his return he began teaching art at the İzmir Lycée. The sources state that he later also taught at Vefa Lycée and at the Gaziosmanpaşa schools in Istanbul; the exact dates are not found in the available texts.

In the first years of the Republic the Sanayi-i Nefise Mektebi was changing both its name and its staff. The İnas Sanayi-i Nefise Mektebi, opened for girls in 1914, had merged with the boys' school in 1926, and in 1927 the institution took the name Sanayi-i Nefise Academy, later becoming the Academy of Fine Arts. With the Republic, Turkish teachers began to replace foreign ones. According to the date given in one biographical source, Sirel was appointed to the school as a teacher of sculpture on 1 August 1927; Mahir Tomruk had been made the school's modelling teacher a year earlier, in 1926. In 1932 Sirel left the school after falling out with its director, Burhan Toprak; he returned in 1937. Biographical texts also say that during this period he was a student of Mahir Tomruk; the phrase is vague, and the sources do not explain how that relationship came about.

Some sources write that Sirel taught alongside the German sculptor Rudolf Belling. The dates show that this collaboration belongs to his second period at the school, since Belling took charge of the academy's sculpture studio in 1937, the very year Sirel returned. According to Yağçı, Belling gave a classical, figure-based training until 1955, divided the sculpture department into six studios and required his students to master the principles of drawing, form, volume, void, mass and proportion. Sirel's second period at the academy was spent within this reorganised department.

On 22 November 1952 he was appointed director of the Academy. He held the post until his death in 1959, spending the last seven years of his life at the head of the school where he had been among Turkey's first teachers of sculpture. His years as director coincided with a change of direction in the academy's sculpture teaching. Yağçı writes that contemporary movements entered the academy's teaching in 1950, when Ali Hadi Bara and Zühtü Müridoğlu took up posts as studio teachers, and that some of Belling's pupils went abroad and came back with the new movements. In Aydın's words, the first Republican generation had concentrated on figurative work and after 1950 shifted its weight to abstract works. It is worth noting that Sirel, himself a sculptor bound to nature and to tradition, headed the school while this transformation was under way; no record of the decisions he took as director, however, appears in the sources available to us.

One of the Pioneers

Derya Uzun Aydın's article presents Mahir Tomruk and Nijat Sirel as the first pioneering names of Turkish sculpture in the Republican period and as the pioneers who trained the first sculptors of Republican Turkey. According to the article, the first Republican generation thought of reflecting the new ideology, but tried to stay clear of an outlook that merely repeated itself. Mahir Tomruk (1884-1949) trained at the Sanayi-i Nefise before the Republic, later trained many sculptors himself, and was an artist whose busts recall the influence of German neoclassicism. The sources give his year of birth as either 1884 or 1885.

The same article explains that in the early years of the Republic there were as yet no technical experts, tools or workshops capable of producing large monuments, that for this reason the first monuments were made by foreign sculptors, and that this was constantly criticised. The figures given by Halil Özyiğit show the picture clearly: from 3 October 1926, when the first Atatürk statue was unveiled at Sarayburnu, until Atatürk's death, ten monumental statues came from the hands of three different foreign sculptors; the foreign names of this first period include Heinrich Krippel, Pietro Canonica, Anton Hanak and Josef Thorak. In contrast, between 1929 and 1938 six Turkish sculptors, Kenan Ali Yontuç, Nijad Sirel, Mahir Tomruk, Nusret Suman, Ali Hadi Bara and Zühtü Müridoğlu, raised monumental statues in the squares of eighteen different towns and cities. Within this small group Sirel was one of the artists who did not content himself with busts but also put his name to monumental statues. The sources count him among the first Turkish sculptors to take over monumental sculpture in Turkey from foreign artists, and Aydın too writes that the concept of the monumental statue gained particular importance in the work of Nijat Sirel.

On the character of his art, Aydın, drawing on Ahmet Köksal, writes that his manner was expressive and expressionistic, soft and at times attentive to detail, and that he was close to nature and traditional. This first generation of Turkish sculpture generally produced naturalistic works in classical forms, above all busts, and mostly used plaster, stone and bronze. According to Aydın, the fact that most works of this early period were small and made of plaster has worked against their survival; that a significant share of Sirel's works in museums are plaster fits this picture.

An early document showing Sirel's place within his own generation is Nurullah Berk's book Türk Heykeltraşları, published in 1937. As Ercan Yılmaz relates, the book was prepared for an exhibition of works by sculptors trained in the sculpture section of the Sanayi-i Nefise, later the Academy of Fine Arts, and became the first comprehensive source on Turkish sculpture of the Republican period. The ten Turkish sculptors included in the book are İhsan, Mahir, Nijat Sirel, Ratip Aşir, Sabiha Bengütaş, Nermin Sirel, İraida Barry, Ali Hadi, Zühtü Müridoğlu and Nusret Suman. In Yılmaz's view, the absence from the list of Kenan Yontuç, who had by then made more Atatürk statues than anyone, is a sign of the critical view the academy circle took of him. Sirel, by contrast, stands in this list within the core group that the academy itself recognised.

Busts

Sirel is known above all for busts in which he gave form to prominent figures. His works in the Istanbul Museum of Painting and Sculpture include a bronze head of Abdülhak Hamit Tarhan (dated 1928 according to one source), a bust of Midhat Pasha, a plaster mask of Ahmet Haşim, a plaster head of the painter Avni Lifij and a plaster Head of a Woman. To these are added the busts of Cemil Cem Bey, one of the directors of the Sanayi-i Nefise Mektebi, and of the sculptor Nermin Farukî. The Ankara Painting and Sculpture Museum also holds a work of his entitled Head of a Woman, inventory number H-0041. The sources differ on the material of the Midhat Pasha bust; some lists say plaster, while Aydın writes that the work appears to have been cast in bronze.

According to the descriptions in Aydın's article, the head dominates the Abdülhak Hamit bust; the sculptor hardly went below the neck, showing only the collar of the garment with its tie, and the arms are not included. The face is rendered with self-assured, hard and sharp lines, and a sharp handling of light brings out the forms; the cheekbones are emphasised, the eye sockets and cheeks are hollow and the brows are knitted. In the Avni Lifij bust one sees hair drawn back, a confident gaze and careful work on the nose, mouth and moustache; at the time the article was written, flaking on the back of the work was also noted. That Sirel portrayed the brother-in-law from whom he had taken his first painting lessons lends this bust a family meaning as well.

The Midhat Pasha bust renders, in a naturalistic manner, a face with a thick moustache and beard, in a fez and a pasha's front-buttoned dress; Aydın says that this face carries less expression than the other busts and that its surfaces are left smooth. The Cemil Cem bust shows an elegant man with bow tie, shirt and jacket: a thin moustache, a bald head and a calm expression give even someone who did not know the sitter an idea of his character. The Nermin Farukî bust consists of the head and shoulders; with hair covering the ears and a soft gaze, it is a calm and plain work. The sitters include a poet, a painter, a statesman, a former director of the school and a sculptor; the list shows that Sirel portrayed the names of the cultural and artistic world close to him.

At a time when nude studies were considered quite problematic, the seated female figure he made together with Nermin Farukî is also in the Istanbul Museum of Painting and Sculpture. The full-length nude is seated; the head turns to one side and one hand holds the shoulder. Aydın writes that a nude figure is a bolder undertaking in a three-dimensional art, yet one senses in the work a deliberate avoidance of details that would push the limits, and that the placing of the hand and the seated pose support this restraint. Some accounts say that the hairstyle and anatomical features of the figure recall Farukî; whether the figure was studied from her as a model is not known.

The Equestrian Atatürk Monument in Bursa

The story of the Bursa Atatürk Monument, Sirel's best-known work, is also important for what it shows about the conditions of monument-making at the time. The idea of an Atatürk monument in Bursa was first voiced in the issue of 29 September 1925 of the city's local newspaper Yeni Fikir. Five years later the Governorship of Bursa decided to commission a monument, and in February 1930 the commission was given to Sirel. The model was reviewed by the Academy of Fine Arts and approved by the Ministry of National Education; the monument was made by Sirel in a private studio in Şişli, Istanbul, with the help of Mahir Tomruk. Here the sources place the emphasis differently: some describe the monument as a joint work of the two artists, while a detailed text devoted to the Bursa monument names Sirel as the artist and Tomruk as his assistant. One biographical source writes that Nermin Farukî also helped on this work, but gives the year as 1928; since the commission was given in 1930 this date is inconsistent, and Farukî's contribution could not be confirmed in any other source.

The monument was unveiled on 29 October 1931, during the ceremonies for the eighth anniversary of the Republic, in Bursa's Government Square. On the same day Heinrich Krippel's equestrian Atatürk monument was being unveiled in Samsun; that on the Republic's anniversary an equestrian monument should rise in each of two cities, one from the hand of a foreign sculptor and the other from a Turkish one, reflects the transitional state of the period well. The Bursa monument consists of a marble pedestal and a bronze statue of Atatürk; Atatürk is shown on horseback, in military dress, as a victorious commander. First known as the "Gazi statue", the monument came to be called the "Atatürk statue" after Mustafa Kemal was given the surname Atatürk. The north face of the pedestal bears an inscription beginning "Turk who stands before this beloved statue, bow with reverence". The east face records the founding of the Republic (29 October 1923) and the west face the liberation of Bursa (11 September 1922).

In Aydın's assessment, although Atatürk appears motionless from a distance in the Bursa monument, close up one feels strength and tension; the horse's head looks upward and the movement is clearly expressed. The sources count this as one of Sirel's finest works.

Other Atatürk Monuments

The list of monuments that followed Bursa is not consistent in the sources as to dates and collaborators. Aydın, drawing on Berk's book of 1937, writes that Sirel is remembered for the Atatürk monuments he made in Bursa, İzmit and Çanakkale; on this basis these three monuments must have been completed before 1937. The sources' accounts are as follows.

  • Çanakkale Atatürk Monument: One source dates it to 1933. Another gives 1972-73, and a biographical source gives 1944. For an artist who died in 1959, 1972-73 is impossible; the mention of the monument in Berk's book of 1937 also weakens the date 1944 and makes 1933 more likely. The exact date cannot be established from the available sources.
  • Kocaeli (İzmit) Atatürk Monument: Mentioned in many sources, and evidently made before 1937; no date or details are given.
  • Bolu Atatürk Monument (1940): Aydın and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism give the date 1940. Ercan Yılmaz's studies of Ratip Aşir Acudoğu record the monument as a joint work of Acudoğu and Sirel. One biographical source, however, names Ratip Aşir Acudoğlu in one place and Hakkı Atamulu in another as his collaborator on this monument; the weight of evidence favours Acudoğu.
  • Atatürk and İnönü Monuments in Malatya: Made together with Hakkı Atamulu; the date 1944 is given for the Atatürk monument.

His partner in Bolu, Ratip Aşir Acudoğu, belonged to the same generation as Sirel. Born in Istanbul in 1898, he entered the sculpture section of the Sanayi-i Nefise in 1918, also studied in Germany, began teaching art in Edirne in 1929, later taught at schools in Zeyrek, Bakırköy and Beykoz in Istanbul, and died in 1957. The Menemen Kubilay Monument (1934), the Erzincan İnönü Monument (1947) and the Atatürk Monument at the Faculty of Agriculture of Ankara University (1954) are his principal works. Like Sirel, he came to monumental sculpture as an occupation pursued alongside his teaching.

According to some accounts, Sirel showed Atatürk in his monuments sometimes in uniform and sometimes in civilian dress. In Aydın's assessment, the same dull, static effect found in his busts can be felt in Sirel's monumental statues; the Bolu monument, too, is less animated than the one in Bursa. This judgement belongs to a single scholar; a detailed study of all his monuments does not appear in the texts available to us.

Nermin Farukî and the Family

Many sources write that Sirel married Nermin Farukî, one of Turkey's first women sculptors; one biographical source adds that he received her help on many of his works. Aydın's article, on the other hand, refers to Farukî as his "sculptor friend". The date and details of the marriage are not found in the available sources. That the artist appears in Berk's book of 1937 under the name "Nermin Sirel" suggests that the marriage took place before that date; this is an inference. English-language sources also refer to her as Nermin Sirel Farukî and state that joint works of the couple are in the Istanbul Museum of Painting and Sculpture.

Nermin Farukî was the daughter of Ahmet Farukî, of Egyptian origin, who is counted among the first perfume makers of the Ottoman Empire. She had been a pupil of İhsan Özsoy in the sculpture department of the İnas Sanayi-i Nefise Mektebi, studying alongside her friend Sabiha Bengütaş, and then studied at the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts. She submitted models to the coin design competition of 1934, and her letter criticising the jury for results she did not find modern enough was published in the newspaper Cumhuriyet on 29 August 1934. In 1957 she opened her first solo exhibition at the Istanbul City Gallery, and she died in Istanbul in 1991. Her year of birth is given in the sources as either 1904 or 1914. Biographical texts state that she was 17 years younger than Sirel; this agrees with 1914, but if the 1904 given by most sources is accepted, the gap shrinks to seven or eight years. Taken together with his elder sister Harika Sirel and his brother-in-law Avni Lifij, it can be said that Sirel lived a life surrounded by artists both in his family and in his marriage.

The Question of Bronze Casting

Some biographical sources write that on 17 June 1959 Sirel carried out the first bronze casting of a statue in Turkey and thus earned the title of the first artist in this field. This claim should be treated with caution. The date falls on the day before his death. Moreover, according to Aydın, the important development in sculpture casting in Turkey took place in the 1930s: in 1937 Kenan Yontuç brought the Hungarian master Fidzek Karoly to the country, Fidzek set up a foundry in the Narmanlı Yurdu at the top of Tünel, and trained Orhan Yurdagül, İzak Amon and Hayrettin Kocaer, whom he took on as apprentices, as the country's first founders. Before that even foreign artists had the bronze casts of their works made in their own countries. Considering also that the Bursa monument was unveiled in bronze in 1931, the claim appears contradictory; perhaps a particular casting of 1959 is meant, but we have not been able to document the claim.

His Death

Nijat Sirel died of a heart attack in Istanbul on 18 June 1959, while still serving as director of the Academy; according to the sources he was 61. His death was announced in the newspaper Cumhuriyet: in the archive Reşad Ekrem Koçu assembled for his İstanbul Ansiklopedisi (Istanbul Encyclopedia), two clippings cut from the paper's issues of 23 and 24 June 1959 are kept under the heading "Sirel (Nijad)". The subject index of the archive records lists Şişli Mosque and Zincirlikuyu Cemetery; this suggests that the funeral prayer was held at Şişli Mosque and that he was buried at Zincirlikuyu, but since we could not read the text of the clippings this is an inference. Some sources also state that he was buried in Zincirlikuyu Cemetery. An obituary website, however, writes that the location of his grave is unknown; these two pieces of information contradict each other.

In Amasya's Memory

The sources available to us contain no information about a work Sirel made in Amasya, a monument in Amasya, or a school, street or foundation bearing his name. His tie to Amasya appears to be limited to its being his birthplace; no firm document has been found on his family's life in Amasya, his childhood years or his departure from the city. Among the deputies who represented Amasya in the First Grand National Assembly appears the name of Dr. Asım (Sirel); but apart from the similarity of surname we have found no record showing a family tie between the two. Even so, that one of those who made the Republic's first monumental statues with Turkish hands, from a family that produced two artists together with his sister Harika, was born in Amasya is a small but notable detail in the city's place in the history of art.

Chronology

1897 or 1898: Born in Amasya (the sources give both years).

1915: Went to Germany to study sculpture; worked at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts in the studio of the teacher named Kahn in the sources, most probably Hermann Hahn.

1922: Returned home and began teaching art at the İzmir Lycée.

1 August 1927: Appointed teacher of sculpture at the Sanayi-i Nefise Mektebi (Academy of Fine Arts).

1930 (February): The Governorship of Bursa gave Sirel the commission for the Atatürk monument.

29 October 1931: The equestrian Atatürk Monument in Bursa, completed with the help of Mahir Tomruk, was unveiled.

1932: Left the school after a disagreement with its director, Burhan Toprak.

1933: Çanakkale Atatürk Monument (according to one source; other dates are also given).

1937: Returned to the Academy; in the same year Rudolf Belling took charge of the sculpture studio. Included in Nurullah Berk's book Türk Heykeltraşları.

1940: Bolu Atatürk Monument, together with Ratip Aşir Acudoğu.

22 November 1952: Appointed director of the Academy.

18 June 1959: Died in Istanbul; his death was announced in Cumhuriyet on 23 and 24 June.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • "Sirel (Nijad)", clippings from the newspaper Cumhuriyet, 23 and 24 June 1959, Istanbul Encyclopedia Archive (Reşad Ekrem Koçu), Salt and Kadir Has University.

Academic studies

  • Uzun Aydın, Derya. "Cumhuriyet Dönemine Işık Tutan İki Heykeltıraş; Mahir Tomruk ve Ali Nijat Sirel", İstanbul Journal of Social Sciences, Spring 2013, issue 3.
  • Yılmaz, Ercan. "Cumhuriyetin İlk Heykeltıraşlarından Ratip Aşir Acudoğu: Yaşamı ve Anıtları", Sanat & Tasarım Dergisi, 8(2), 2018, pp. 250-265 (abstract in the İnönü University open archive).

Official sources

  • Özyiğit, Halil. "Pietro Canonica'nın Ankara Etnografya Müzesi Önündeki Atlı Atatürk Anıtı ve Basına Yansımaları", publication of the Presidency of the Atatürk Cultural Centre (akmb.gov.tr).
  • "Nijat Sirel (1897 - 1959)", Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Türkiye, artist information of the Ankara State Museum of Painting and Sculpture.
  • "Nijad Sirel", Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Türkiye (ktb.gov.tr).

Books

  • Yılmaz, Ercan. Cumhuriyet'in İlk Çeyrek Yüzyılında Edirne'de Heykel ve Heykeltıraşlar, Paradigma Akademi Yayınları, Çanakkale. paradigmaakademiyayinlari.com

Other sources

  • Yağçı, Necmettin. "Cumhuriyet Sonrası Türk Heykel Sanatı Eğitimini Etkileyen Faktörler ve Heykel Eğitiminde Soyutlama", idil, 60 (August 2019), pp. 1049-1062.
  • "Hermann Hahn (Bildhauer)", Wikipedia (German). de.wikipedia.org
  • "Nijat Sirel", Vikipedi (Turkish).
  • "Nijat Sirel", Wikipedia (English).
  • "Nermin Farukî", Wikipedia (English).
  • "Bursa Atatürk Heykeli", Vikipedi (Turkish).
  • "Sanâyi-i Nefîse Mektebi", Vikipedi (Turkish).
  • "Mahir Tomruk", Vikipedi (Turkish).
  • "Nijat Sirel Hayatı ve Heykelciliği", Edebiyat Sanat Akademisi, 2013.
  • "Nijat Sirel" and "Nermin Faruki", Biyografiler.com.
  • "Nermin Faruki (1914 ~1991)", Turkish Republican Money (cumhuriyetparalari.com), 2023.
  • "Ali Nijat Sirel", Olumhaberi.com.

Online sources