Perihan Arpacilar

1949 to 2022, Turkey/Germany

Perihan Arpacilar was born in Boyabat, Turkey and lived in Frankfurt for over 30 years. She worked at the Atelier Goldstein in Frankfurt am Main. Her leading motif was portraits with human subjects.

Her pictures captured the fleetingness of human interactions that is characteristic of our time. Her painting technique, which used little colour and subtle yet powerful brushstrokes, made use of the ancient Asian method of employing the effects of water. Pigments dissolved in water flow over her drawings and infuse them with a light, serendipitous effect at the interface between the figurative and the abstract. Perihan Arpacilar’s work can be seen, for example, in the collection of Gerhard and Karin Dammann, Switzerland.

Selected works