Eşref Armağan Biography

The Blind Painter from Turkey

Turkish painter Eşref Armağan was born blind in an underprivileged family. However, he did not let his status or blindness stop him from learning writing and painting. He is one of Turkey’s most famous painters and has a splendid reputation across the world, thanks to his talent.

                Eşref paints in absolute silence using oil paints after he uses a braille stylus to create the outline of his drawing. He uses his fingers to apply the oil paint. Then, he leaves it to dry before applying a new colour so that there is no smudging. In the entire process, he does not take any help from anyone. He creates art that has a visual perspective. Eşref is an accomplished painter for the past thirty-five years.

                Eşref has had more than 20 exhibitions of his artwork in countries like Italy, China, Czech Republic and the Netherlands. As a result, he had heavy media coverage in Turkey and has been a subject of a study on human perception. This study was conducted by a psychologist called John Kennedy from the University of Toronto. Apart from this, he was a study case for two researchers from Harvard University – Amir Amedia and Alvaro Pascual-Leone. They wanted to understand more about neural plasticity. Through their study, they found out that his visual cortex signals behaved as if he could actually see.

Born- 1953

Place- Istanbul, Turkey

Field- Painting

Highest Honor-

Achievement- He is a blind painter whose paintings have a visual perspective.