U%c5%9faglar [2021] — Celed
For collectors and art lovers, acquiring a Celed Üşaglar—even a late-period bronze or a signed lithograph—is not just buying an asset; it is preserving a fragment of a lost philosophical argument. He is the architect of a bridge that was never fully crossed, a sculptor of the twist that defines the modern human condition.
His first major public break came with the monument "Yükselen Ruh" (The Ascending Spirit) in 1934. The work was a ten-foot-tall spiral of interlocking rhomboids. Critics were baffled. The state, which was busy promoting figurative, heroic statues of Atatürk, viewed abstract geometry with suspicion. Üşaglar defended his work not as "art for art's sake," but as a mathematical representation of the nation's ascent from feudalism to industry. The hallmark of Celed Üşaglar’s mature period is what art historians now call the "Üşaglar Twist." This is a technical maneuver where a solid planar surface appears to rotate 90 degrees upon itself without breaking its structural integrity. In his 1947 masterpiece, "Sonsuz Döngü" (Infinite Loop) , the viewer cannot tell where the bronze begins or ends. The piece rejects the classical pedestal, instead hovering just four inches off the ground, as if growing from the floor like a metallic vine. celed u%C5%9Faglar
Üşaglar wrote extensively (though his manuscripts were largely unpublished until a 2015 retrospective) about the "psychology of torsion." He believed that every human being experiences an internal twist—between East and West, tradition and modernity, faith and science. His sculptures were attempts to freeze that psychological stress in physical space. The 1950s were unkind to Celed Üşaglar. As the Turkish art market matured, it leaned heavily toward abstract expressionism and lyrique abstraction, which were seen as more "universal" than Üşaglar’s rigid, intellectual constructivism. Funding dried up. In 1958, following a disastrous exhibition in Paris where only one small study sold, Üşaglar returned to İzmir and began systematically destroying his plaster models. For collectors and art lovers, acquiring a Celed
Today, the is housed in a small, dedicated room at the İzmir Sanat Müzesi. In 2022, a small bronze study from 1949 bearing his signature "C.Ü." sold for $320,000 at a London auction—a record for an artist of his obscure rank. Why Celed Üşaglar Matters Now In the current era of digital art and NFT distortions, the rigid, mathematical purity of Celed Üşaglar offers a counterbalance. He asks the viewer to slow down. To look at an angle. To feel the torsion of a material pushed to its logical breaking point. The work was a ten-foot-tall spiral of interlocking
Studying at the Vkhutemas (Higher Art and Technical Studios) in Moscow, Üşaglar was exposed to the raw energy of Constructivism and Suprematism. While his peers in Europe were dissecting Cubism, Üşaglar was learning about the dynamic tension of mass and void from the disciples of Kazimir Malevich. This Soviet period is the single most important key to understanding his later work—specifically his fixation on the "spiral of labor." Upon returning to the newly declared Republic of Turkey in 1928, Celed Üşaglar settled not in the bustling capital of Ankara or the cultural hub of Istanbul, but in İzmir. Here, he formed a loose collective known as the "İzmir Avangard." While the Istanbul scene was dominated by decorative Ottoman flourishes and Parisian-inspired landscapes, Üşaglar was carving geometric abstractions from local marble and imported bronze.
