Description

Original gouache in colours on paper, signed Moualla 54. 

A major artist of the Turkish school in Paris, Fikret Moualla (1903-1967) moved to Paris in the late 1930s after producing a series of large gouaches to decorate the café in the Turkish pavilion at the New York Universal Exhibition. He attended the Grande Chaumière academy and the studios of Othon Friesz and André Lhote, and exhibited in the galleries of Dina Vierny, Marcel Bernheim, France Bertin, Bruno Bassano and Katia Granoff, as well as in Switzerland and Belgium. A hot-tempered drinker, Mouella also frequented several psychiatric institutions, in Turkey and France, before Louis Lhermine and, above all, Fernande Anglès - who was also a patron of Bernard Buffet - took care of him. By the early 60s, his style was evolving, the evanescence of his features disappearing, giving way to more fixed compositions with clearly delineated areas. After suffering a stroke in 1962, he left Paris for Reillanne in the Alpes Maritime; despite the after-effects of hemiplegia and cognitive problems, he continued to paint until his death on 19 July 1967.

See the well-documented website www.moualla.com and the catalogue raisonné of his work by Marc Ottavi & Kerem Topuz.