Hulda Festival

"In my view, art is a human quest into the unknown."
— From Gunes Karabuda’s interview with Ilhan Koman, Milliyet Sanat, new series: 20, 15 March 1981.

Born in 1921 in Edirne-Turkey, Ilhan Koman studied at the Istanbul Academy of Fine Arts. After his graduation in 1946 he went to Paris where he worked in l’Académie Julian and l’Ecole du Louvre (1947-1950) and opened his first solo exhibition. He produced his first iron works in Istanbul between 1951 and 1958 at the Academy’s sculpture department and workshop of which he was the co-founding professor. In 1958 he was invited to the Brussels World Fair to represent Turkey. In 1959 he moved to Stockholm where he took a professorship at the Swedish School of Arts Crafts and Design, Konstfackskolan, and lived here until his death in 1986.

Ilhan Koman’s work is influenced not only by artists such as Rodin, Giacometti, Brancusi but also by the principles of scientific disciplines as he has written to art critic Kristian Romare: "The content I expect to see in a work of art must be part of a chain, the last link of which is always open to welcome the newcomer. Just like concepts of science. All in all, I would like to be able to make an art of 'the enabling link'."

His work that spans a great variety of innovative materials and methodologies are presently found in the collections of Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Museo J. Battle, Montevideo; Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; National Museum for Painting and Sculpture, Istanbul; Palais des Beaux-Arts (BOZAR), Brussels; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle; Santralistanbul and Bogazici Universitesi, Istanbul. Most of his later works are designed as projects to be actualised in monumental scale.