By Heidi Trautmann

A delicacy we were given on the opening evening at the Ismet Güney Art Centre in Nicosia, Güner Pir’s painting exhibition with the title “WORDS”, inspirations by words written by the Cypriot poets Fikret Demirag, Filiz Naldöven, Neriman Cahit, Faize Özdemirciler, Hilmi Yavuz, Cemal Süreyya, Can Yücel, Murathan Mungan, Ahmet Arif, Sabahattin K. Aksal, Özdemir Asaf…

A manifestation of cooperation between the arts, visual and performing arts, poetry and music. The words in the paintings were made audible, tangible and Güner Pir’s message filled the room with the actors’ voices of Yaşar Ersoy, Döndü Özata, Melis Beşe and Umut Ersoy and  the music by Oskay Hoca.

Güner Pir is a documenter of Cyprus history; his beautiful paintings are documents of Cypriot destiny, the Cypriots’ sadness, loneliness, tiredness, being torn and longing for lost values, words he has been thinking about and which he found confirmed in the poetry of the above poets. They have inspired him while working on the paintings, he included key words, they accompany the brush strokes like tunes to the lyrics.

Getting close to the delicate paintings you can see the structure of paint, layers upon layers, brushed, combed, removed and redone, the choice of colour to come close to the dreaminess of old documents,  yellowed old paper, the colour of history past…

The exhibition will be open until December 28, weekdays 09.30 – 16:00 hrs.