Esirkus, Mustafa

Here a line of folk dancers moves in unison to the tune of the piper at the far right. Although recognizable, they are obscured under a welter of scratchy lines that convey the dancers’ sense of joy in communal movement.

Esirkus graduated from the Painting Department at the Academy of Fine Arts, Istanbul, in 1948. He was a co-founder of the Group of Ten (Onlar Grubu)—composed of students of the prominent Turkish artist Bedri Rahmi Eyüboglu—which aimed to treat motifs drawn from the country’s traditional folk and decorative arts, and which was active from 1947 to 1955. Esirkus’s artistic practice is driven by two main themes: scenes drawn from folk culture and images of fishermen, and his color palette is usually dominated by tones of dark blue and gray.