Sabiha Bengütaş

Biography

In 1927 a letter in French reached Pietro Canonica in Rome, noting that Sabiha Ziya had placed first in the qualifying examination, but that she was twenty-two and might marry. The letter is held in the Osman Nuri Ergin archive.

She was born in Istanbul in 1904 into a military family, the second of three children: she had an elder brother and a sister. She finished primary school in the Eyüp district of Istanbul. When her father was posted to Damascus, the family moved there, and she spent a year at a French Catholic school. After they returned they lived on the island of Büyükada, where she completed her schooling at the Köprülü Fuat Pasha School.

She entered the School of Fine Arts (Sanayi-i Nefise) in 1919 or 1920; the exact year is not known. She began in the painting department under Feyhaman Duran, then moved to sculpture, where she studied under İhsan Özsoy. She was the first woman in her class. Illness interrupted her sculpture studies for two years, but in 1922 she still showed a bust at the Galatasaray exhibition. In 1925 three of her busts were again shown there, and three more the following year. Among her early works are busts of the poet Ahmet Haşim and the actress Bedia Muvahhit.

In 1925 she came first in an examination among sculpture students, the result of which was to decide which of them would be sent to study in Europe. The place went to Ratip Aşir Acudoğu, who came second: she was a woman. In 1926 the commission for the monument in Taksim Square held an examination to choose an assistant for the Italian sculptor Pietro Canonica, who was making the Monument of the Republic. Again she came first. There was reluctance to send her abroad, and the document authorising the posting was signed by the Minister of Education, Mustafa Necati. Her state scholarship to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome dates from 1924. In Italy, by some accounts, she worked in Canonica’s studio for about a year and a half; by others, only briefly: casting did not interest her, and she moved to the studio of Ermenegildo Luppi. The Monument of the Republic in Taksim was unveiled in 1928.

In 1930 she entered a competition at the Academy of Fine Arts but did not win first place. In 1933 she married Şakir Emin Bengütaş, a diplomat and grandson of the poet Abdülhak Hamit Tarhan. Her husband’s postings took her to Italy, to Moscow, where in 1938 she took part in an exhibition, and to other countries; on these trips she visited museums.

Her main commissions came in that same year, 1938: she won two competitions at once, one for a monument to Atatürk and one for a monument to İsmet İnönü. She prepared the sketches in Turkey. İnönü, in the uniform of the commander of the Western Front, is cast in bronze: the statue recalls the Armistice of Mudanya of 1922 and stands in Mudanya. She finished the model in 1941 and the statue in 1946. Atatürk is carved from Carrara marble, at the same height, and stands in the garden of Çankaya Mansion. Both statues were completed in Italy, and after the war they could not be shipped home for a long time: there was no transport until the ships escorting the American battleship Missouri, which carried the body of Ambassador Münir Ertegün, called at Naples. To my mind, it is one of the most unusual stories of a sculpture’s transport in Turkish art.

She went on exhibiting: in 1940 and 1941 at the state exhibitions of painting and sculpture, and in 1960–1961 with a solo show at the Turkish-American Association. The last exhibition known to us she opened in Ankara in 1965. The only known text under her name is the article “Our Sculpture” in the magazine Şadırvan (1949), in which she doubted that sculpture in Turkey would have a future without the support of wealthy patrons.

After her husband retired, the couple settled in Ankara. In 1988 she took in a girl named Nurol. In 1991 the Plastic Arts Association awarded her a certificate of honour. She died in Ankara on 2 October 1992. A bust of her mother, Asime, was shown in 2011–2012 at Istanbul Modern, the museum of modern art in Istanbul.