Ugurcan Yüce

The first picture I remember is one of a street seller, the kind that was often encountered at those times... a donkey with baskets full of vegetables on his back and the shouting seller behind it...

In the following years my work was based on animal, landscape, still life and human motifs... My childhood instincts forced me to draw tigers attacking the travellers riding elephants, or a strong man fighting a crocodile, or sometimes an old ship attacked by a whale as big as Moby Dick... Amid all these animated subjects, the sparkle of the grapes among the fruit brought home would attract me and I would quickly paint an arrangement consisting of a slice of watermelon, a few apples, pears and grapes. Many times, I would leave aside the paints and brushes and I would draw on a blank piece of paper a machine of my invention, one that had zero possibility of working out, and I would put it aside with the hope that in the future it would serve mankind. These drawings would be either a submarine for two or a machine gun which would stall the enemy while we escaped... If I got bored with that, I would draw Greek Mythology or an illustrated novel about the life of an artist... All these variations fitted into the first 10 years of my life... In the following years my interest was caught by daily life motifs of the Ottoman Empire, the portraits of the Sultans and war scenes... Doing these, I got acquainted with oil paint...

During my high school years, I wasn’t a good student and instead of listening to the teacher I was more interested in drawing my classmates’ portraits or whatever they asked me to draw... When they left the choice to me, I used to draw one of the most famous rock bands of the time, “The Shadows” (which even today is my favourite band). If I didn’t have much time, I would settle for horse, or lion drawings... What amazes me is the fact that almost all of my friends whom I met years later told me that they still had one of the pictures I had drawn at the time...

My first professional work were the frescos I painted in oil paint on the walls of a company. These were the works I took pride in when I was 18... I worked intensively for nearly four months and I finished the panels, which were 4-meters big and had a mythological theme, on time for the company’s opening day... I will never forget the feeling I had during those four months, comparing myself to the young Michelangelo... Unfortunately I don’t have any evidence left of these works which, in the course of time, flaked because of humidity...

After I graduated from high school, with great difficulty because I was so lazy, the colourful years that I had been longing for began. I passed the entrance exam of the Fine Arts Academy (since renamed the ‘Mimar Sinan Academy’) with flying colours in three subjects. Among painting, sculpture and decoration subjects, I chose the decoration. When I started the academy, the first thing I did was to realize a crazy project. I managed to fit Michelangelo’s ceiling at the Sistine Chapel into an area of 40 cm. Verrochio’s Colleoni, which I did right after that, made me quite well-known in a short time. When these pictures were exhibited by the History of Art Professor, I started to get job offers... From then onAfter two years of preparatory classes, I moved to the Department of Stage and Performing Arts...During my years in this department I gained a large amount of information on literature, history, classical music, costumes and stage setting... This information provided me with very important sources for my future paintings... I graduated with honours from the Academy; however I never practiced my profession of “Theater Stage Setter” unfortunately. The illustrated novel “AYBİKE” I had prepared during my academy years was published in the HÜRRİYET newspaper, my lifetime fight for earning a living started...

I couldn’t restrain myself from painting even during my military service and I finished a big portrait, illustrating Atatürk on his horse, in three months. This painting was hung on the wall of Erzurum Military Club’s honour hall with a military ceremony...

Then, he asked me to do the poster and generics of his new film which was being shot at the time... While we were talking about the sketches, he told me that the film’s title was going to be “BERIVAN and ŞIVAN” (the names of the male and female characters in the film).. The subject of the film was the adventures of a flock of sheep which were being transported from Anatolia to Ankara on a train... At that moment I visualized a flock of sheep coming over to us as if to run us down. I told him this was how I wanted to illustrate it and I suggested that the title of the film should be “SURU” ,“THE FLOCK”. He liked it and accepted... I finished the poster which consisted of the portraits of the actors at the top, the sheep in the middle and “SURU” engraved on rocks at the bottom, in just under a month and I delivered it with the credits to Yılmaz Güney...

This poster introduced me to the movie industry and I started to work intensively with other film companies.

The international success of the film “SURU” and the fact that it won many awards made me very happy and it has been the greatest honor I have had in my entire artistic life...

Germany

With the desire to promote my art abroad I arrived in Germany in 1980 with a painter friend... I started to work with Bastei Verlag (Bastei Publishing House) within a few days. After working on several book covers and illustrated novels for the first two years I was given Gespenster (Ghost) which was a horror serialization. I produced more than 20.000 covers in 20 years just for this series. Together with my other works, the number of covers I produced for Bastei Verlag exceeded 2000...

Over the years I became well-known and I did a variety of work for various companies. Amongst these were the covers for Das Schwarze Auge (Black Eye), prepared by Schmidt Spiel (later Fanpro), that made me significantly well-known in Germany and Europe. I produced more than 100 covers in 10 years for this serialization, which introduced me to the world of fantasy...

My inexhaustible love of art and my desire to paint has never waned...