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The Doğançay Museum, Turkey’s first modern art museum, officially opened its doors to the public in 2004. It is housed in a historic 150-year-old five-story building located in the heart of the bustling Beyoğlu district of Istanbul and provides a general overview of a small portion of the prolific oeuvre of Burhan Doğançay, one of Turkey’s leading artists.
The Doğançay Museum is housed in a historic 150-year-old five-story building located in the heart of bustling Beyoğlu district of Istanbul. Just like a vast number of other important landmark buildings in Beyoglu, the museum was originally in a state of complete disrepair when Burhan Doğançay purchased it in 1999. Following a major four-year renovation, it was restored to its former glory and its interior converted to meet exacting museum standards.
This mini-retrospective spans five decades of Doğançay’s artistic evolution starting with his early figurative paintings up to his wall-inspired works as well as photographs. One room of the museum showcases the work of his father, Adil Doğançay. The collection covers a wide range of media and materials and includes paintings, drawings, sculptures, prints, photographs and Aubusson tapestries.
Since 2005, the Doğançay Museum, in cooperation with the Greater Istanbul Municipality and corporate sponsors, has organized and presented a juried elementary school art competition. Each year, an average of 7,000 students between the ages of eight and fourteen, from 1,500 schools, have submitted their applications for this event. First prizes have included a four-day trip to Paris in 2006 and a one-week trip to London in 2007. The Doğançay Museum is committed to continuing this annual competition, the goal of which is to promote education through art.
Adil Doğançay was born in Istanbul in 1900. An officer in the Turkish army, he was also a well-known painter. His works are predominantly impressionistic land and seascapes and still lifes in oil on canvas. Few of his paintings are dated; most of those on display in the museum were completed between 1940 and 1990, the year he died. As a topographer in the army, Adil traveled all over Anatolia, which gave him the opportunity to spend hours surrounded by nature. He produced most of his paintings outdoors, calling nature his “greatest teacher”.
While the museum is dedicated almost exclusively to the work of its founder Burhan Doğançay, while one floor has been set aside for the work of the artist’s father, Adil Doğançay, a well-known Turkish impressionist painter. With over 100 works on display, the museum offers a stunning visual survey of the evolution of Burhan Doğançay’s oeuvre, from his early figurative paintings to his wall-inspired art.
Burhan Doğançay’s early artistic training was provided by his father and the well-known painter Arif Kaptan. During the early 1950’s Doğançay spent a significant part of his student years in Paris studying art at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere while simultaneously pursuing his studies in law and economics at the University of Paris. During this period he continued to paint regularly and to show his works in several group exhibitions, including joint exhibitions with his father at the Ankara Art Lovers Club.
Following a brief career in the diplomatic service which brought him to New York City in 1962, Doğançay decided in 1964 to devote himself entirely to art and to make New York his permanent home. Since the opening of his museum, however, he has been dividing his time between New York, Istanbul, and the south of Turkey where he also maintains a studio in Turgutreis.
Burhan Doğançay is primarily known for a body of work that grew out of his fascination with urban walls. Spanning a period of almost fifty years, this preoccupation was inspired by his travels to more than 100 countries and has been consistently translated into paintings, graphics, Aubusson tapestries, sculptures and photographs. While urban walls are the recurring theme, the different styles in which they are rendered, vary greatly.
Doğançay re-creates walls in different series, relating to doors, colors, graffiti-types or the objects which he incorporates in his works. With posters and objects gathered from walls forming the main ingredient for his work, it is only logical that Doğançay’s preferred medium has been predominantly ‘collage’ and to some extent ‘fumage’. In the 70’s and 80’s he gained notoriety with his interpretation of urban walls in his signature ribbons series, which in contrast to his collaged billboard works consist of clean paper strips and their calligraphically-shaped shadows.
This series, which grew out of three-dimensional maquettes, later gave rise to alucobond-aluminum shadow sculptures. His collage and fumage works from the cones series form another easily recognizable style. Urban walls have a special meaning for Doğançay they serve as a testament to the passage of time, reflecting social, political and economic change. They also bear witness to the assault of the elements and to the markings left by people.
This, according to Doğançay, is what makes urban walls monuments to the human experience and his oeuvre an archive of our time. While the museum is dedicated almost exclusively to the work of its founder Burhan Doğançay, one floor has been set aside for the work of the artist's father, Adil Doğançay, a well-known Turkish impressionist painter. With over 100 works on display, the museum offers a stunning visual survey of the evolution of Burhan Doğançay’s oeuvre, from his early figurative paintings to his wall-inspired art.
The collection covers a wide range of media and materials and includes paintings, drawings, sculptures, prints, photographs and Aubusson tapestries. It was Doğançay’s explicit intention that the Museum collection would demonstrate how far the speaking walls, which initially provided the inspiration for his work, have developed in experimental and exciting ways over the past five decades.
Ground floor
The museum's reception area is located on the ground floor, as is its gift shop and tearoom, where visitors are treated to tea each afternoon. An Aubusson tapestry based on a Ribbons Series design (one of fourteen that have been produced at L’Atelier Raymond Picaud), photographs, and lithographs are also exhibited in this area. A photographic portrait of Dogançay taken by Christa Frieda Vogel greets visitors as they enter from the street.
First floor
On the first floor, of particular note are works from the Cones Series and the Ribbons Series that both emerged in the early 1970s, marking an important transition from Dogançay’s hitherto realistic rendering of weather-beaten, grimy walls to a more refined, abstract approach that incorporates elegant experiments in shadow and light and dimension. Also exhibited on the first floor are examples from the GREGO Series, named after a New York graffiti artist who almost became an alter ego for Dogançay, enabling him to demonstrate through artwork how walls speak of issues and address passersby.
Second floor
On the second floor, the display from various Dogançay wall-inspired series begins. While urban walls may be their recurring theme, the different styles in which they are rendered and the techniques employed vary greatly from series to series.
Third floor
Visitors will discover the Adil Doğançay Collection and Early Figurative Works by Burhan Doğançay. Throughout his artistic career, Adil Doğançay cultivated Impressionist sensibilities as well as their techniques. Up close the use of open and relatively heavy brushwork is most apparent, yet observed from a distance each painting seems to capture a moment in time, in which the light and line of its subject is everything.
Children Drawing Competition
Since 2005, the museum in cooperation with the Greater Istanbul Municipality and corporate sponsors, has organized and presented a juried elementary school art competition. Each year an average of 7,000 students between the ages of eight to fourteen, from 1,500 schools, have submitted their applications for this event.
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Phone : +90 212 244 7770
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