ARCHITECT AND ARTIST:
NAFİ ÇİL
This website is designed to highlight the works of architect and artist Nafi Çil in both fields. Having signed over 150 architectural projects, Nafi Çil has also produced more than 750 paintings.
While the architectural archive of this highly prolific artist is being prepared for the website, we welcome you with his complete collection of paintings and unique artistic world, accessible via the links on this platform.
Nafi Çil’s artistic journey, spanning from the 1970s to the present, is too deep and vast to be contained within the walls of a single studio. With over 100 works held in corporate and private collections, many paintings of various dimensions remain in the artist's studio. Each of these works is an evolving entity that began at a point in time—sometimes revisited years later—transforming alongside the artist’s own life.
"I was a painter before I became an architect."
With this sentence, Nafi Çil describes not only his profession but his worldview. In his practice, the precision of architecture and the intuition of painting stand side by side. For him, painting is less a mode of expression and more a state of being that emerges patiently over time.
His talent for painting found direction during his middle school years as a student of the painter Sadık Renkler; though he chose architectural education as a more secure career path, he could not leave painting, nor could painting leave him.
His prolific and original architecture maintains a compelling dialogue with the freedom of his artistic world, just as his paintings do with the geometry of architecture.
NAFİ ÇİL’S
LAYERED VISUAL LANGUAGE
Nafi Çil’s paintings carry an experimentalism and a bold relationship with material that may not be immediately apparent. His choices of color, form, and theme, along with the fluid transitions he establishes between the figurative and the abstract, define the character of his work. Layered surfaces, an experimental approach to material, and dense textures become increasingly visible as the viewer draws closer.
In his productions, Çil works on paper or sometimes directly on plywood; he combines methods such as oil painting, incising, and blotting with newsprint. He uses the material not merely as a substrate, but as an active element that constructs the meaning of the painting.
A PERSONAL AESTHETIC FORMED BY MATERIAL, SURFACE, TEXTURE, AND TRACES
SELECTION OF ARTWORKS
A GLIMPSE INTO ÇİL’S WORLD
Apart from the Paintings Archive, this section is designed as a modern showcase featuring works currently available for purchase and is updated regularly. Browse the full collection in the Works Available in the Studio section and contact art@naficil.com for acquisitions.
Hidden
1980s
Oil on Paper (Mounted on Particle Board)
95,2 x 65 cm
Magna Mater II
2010s
Oil on Paper (Mounted on Marine Plywood)
67,6 x 48,5 cm
Sun Woman
2008
Oil on Paper (Mounted on Marine Plywood)
97,7 x 67,5 cm
The Goddess of Victory I
1990s
Oil on Paper (Mounted on Marine Plywood)
98 x 68 cm
Warrior
1991
Oil on Paper (Mounted on Marine Plywood)
108,5 x 83,3 cm
Reclining Woman: Homage to Henry Moore
1981
Oil on Paper (Mounted on Particle Board)
67,3 x 91,8 cm
Sitting Woman
2008, Rev.c.2009
Oil on Paper (Mounted on Marine Plywood)
61,2 x 41 cm
Reclining Woman III
c.2015
Oil on Paper (Mounted on Marine Plywood)
98 x 68,5 cm
Two Figures: Homage to Dubuffet
2006
Oil on Paper (Mounted on Marine Plywood)
76,6 x 49 cm
Friends
c.2011
Oil on Paper (Mounted on Marine Plywood)
69 x 99 cm
Child Face
2012
Oil on Paper (Mounted on Marine Plywood)
84,5 x 75,3 cm
In Memories 1980
1980
Oil on Paper (Mounted on Particle Board)
81 x 56 cm
Woman in Red
2012
Oil on Paper (Mounted on Marine Plywood)
99 x 76,4 cm
Portrait of E.
c.2013
Oil on Paper (Mounted on Marine Plywood)
78,8 x 58 cm
Timeless Gaze
c.2013
Oil on Paper (Mounted on Marine Plywood)
98,5 x 77,2 cm
Girl with Green Eyes
2010
Oil on Paper (Mounted on Marine Plywood)
98,3 x 68,5 cm
Little Girl
2017
Oil on Paper (Mounted on Marine Plywood)
70 x 50 cm
Trace of a Face
2020
Oil on Paper
29,7 x 40,5 cm
No. 31
1992, Rev.c.1998
Oil on Photographic Print of the Artist's Own Painting (Mounted on Hardboard)
49 x 48,5 cm
Adonis
2017
Oil on Paper (Mounted on Marine Plywood)
65 x 47,2 cm
Amid the Depths of Loneliness
1990s
Oil on Paper (Mounted on Marine Plywood)
69 x 49,8 cm
Face of the Age
1990s, Rev.2000s
Oil on Paper (Mounted on Hardboard)
67,9 x 77,6 cm
Child in Dream
1990-2015
Oil on Paper (Mounted on Marine Plywood)
64,8 x 98,8 cm
The Artist
c.2009
Oil on Paper (Mounted on Marine Plywood)
98 x 67,5 cm
The Stone King
c.2010
Oil on Paper (Mounted on Particle Board)
68 x 53 cm
At the Dawn of Humanity
2022
Oil on Paper
69 x 99 cm
Silent Figure
c.2017
Oil on Paper (Mounted on Hardboard)
72,3 x 50,7 cm
No. 71
c.1993-c.2014
Oil on Photographic Print of the Artist's Own Painting (Mounted on Hardboard)
58 x 46 cm
The One Who Faces Time
1989
Oil on Paper (Mounted on Hardboard)
94,6 x 65,4 cm
Hector
2017
Oil on Paper (Mounted on Marine Plywood)
50 x 70 cm
Sacred Hunt
c.1980
Oil on Paper (Mounted on Particle Board)
54 x 54 cm
Silent Column
2001
Oil on Paper (Mounted on Marine Plywood)
99,5 x 77 cm
Soul of the Wall
2012
Oil on Paper (Mounted on Marine Plywood)
100 x 70 cm
Cosmos in the Stone
c.1996
White Lead, Polymer Adhesive, and Oil on Marine Plywood
70,8 x 80,8 cm
Awaiters
c.1980
Oil on Paper (Mounted on Particle Board)
59 x 68,5 cm
Light on the Rocks
1980, Rev.2000s
Oil on Paper (Mounted on Marine Plywood)
98,7 x 68,5 cm
