Abstract tendencies, content analysis and Fikret Mualla in Turkish painting between 1940-1970

The research first takes on the emergence of the abstract art and its development, and analyzes the process of drift towards the abstract in Turkish painting between the dates of 1940-1970 with regard to artists with abstract tendencies. Descriptive content analysis method was used in the analysis process. While examining the inclination towards abstractionism, the research evaluates the effect of Western methods of abstraction and understanding of style on Turkish painting, including to this process the attempts of authentication and formation of a national identity. In another section of the thesis; an analysis is performed on the life and works of Fikret Mualla. And lastly, the paintings of Fikret Mualla, analyzed contextually and also in terms of style, are evaluated and scrutinized in detail taking into consideration the stages of Feldman critique. Since more than a single method of evaluation should be applied in review of pieces of multiple points of significance, the evaluation process of nature, object and figures in Fikret Mualla's paintings is reviewed from various aspects including the geometrical forms which are Kandinsky's color based entities, shape-surface relationship (the basis of Gestalt theory), Itten's color contrast theory, the concept of orientationality in phenomenology, perceptional differences and the process of transference, reaching a single verdict in general. In the scope of the data obtained, descriptive analysis method using the conclusions of the relational model. With this study on Turkish painting, psychological approaches and subjective perception processes underlying the formation process of Fikret Mualla's paintings are analyzed, acknowledging that Mualla is a value that must be extended and examined within itself. In this sense, analyzation of 1940-1970 period - to which this research is limited - in which a common intellectual process with West in terms of differences of perception and transference of objective world along with the tendencies of abstraction is achieved in artistic creations is thought to be of significance in its capacity to contribute new researches.