Dino began his secondary education at the American high school Robert College of Istanbul, but dropped out to devote himself to painting, drawing and writing.

Shortly after returning to Turkey, he went to Paris, France, where he worked from 1937 to 1939, meeting such famous artists as Gertrude Stein, Tristan Tzara and Picasso.

[citation needed] Following his return to Istanbul again, he participated in the famous "Harbour Exhibition", consisting of paintings of the city's dockworkers and fishermen by well-known Turkish painters of the time.

The exhibition aroused widespread public interest, and that year Dino was asked to design the Turkish pavilion at the 1939 New York World's Fair.

Meanwhile, he published articles and cartoons in several of the foremost magazines of that time, studying a new approach to realism together with his elder brother poet Arif Dino.

[citation needed] During World War II, he did drawings inspired by the conflict, but his treatment of political subjects in wartime incurred official displeasure, and in 1941 the martial law command of Istanbul exiled him and his elder brother to southeastern Anatolia, where their grandfather had been a governor before.

Their foreign and Turkish friends, including Nazım Hikmet, Yaşar Kemal, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar and Melih Cevdet, found the opportunity to meet one another at the Dino’s home.

The Dinos were also always ready with a helping hand for young Turkish painters and students in Paris, introducing them to world-famous masters, and assisting them to get established.