#OA43
1928
229. [3] p.: ill. 28x20 cm. Modern cloth binding. Title page in modern Turkish, the rest of the volume in Ottoman Turkish. Holes in the block from the previous binding. Minor soiling of the pages, otherwise in very good condition.
First edition of the book, that defined the Turkish art.
Author, Celal Esat [Esad] Arseven (1876-1971) was a Turkish painter, politician and lecturer. At the time of the publication of this book he was a professor of the history of Architecture at Academy of Arts in Istanbul. The founder of one of the first comic magazines in Turkey (Kalem), he is best known for complying the 5-volume encyclopedia on Turkish art, and popularizing the term, that was introduced by him in this work, among other publications of the period.
In Türk Sanatı, Arseven sought to ground his argument by defining “Turkish art” through such qualities as simplicity of composition, harmony, and a rationalism that resists exaggeration—features closely aligned with contemporary modernist conceptions of architecture. He later published another key work, Yeni Mimari (New Architecture, 1931), in which he attempted to reconcile the “national” with “international modernism” and to situate Turkish art within a broader European framework.
