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Homage to Calligraphy

Burhan DOĞANÇAY

Homage to Calligraphy © EP 2021

Türkiye, 1981

Acrylic on canvas, 152 x 152 cm

signed and dated (lower right)

Donated by the artist in 2003

Walls and their traces of history are at the core of Burhan Doğançay’s process. Groundbreaking artist, celebrated academic, government official and even footballer, he excelled in everything he undertook. Academically, he studied law at the University of Ankara (1950) and went on to obtain a doctorate in economics from the Université de Paris (1950–1955). Artistically, he nurtured his talent under his father Adil Doğançay and Arif Kaptan, both prominent figures of the Turkish Art scene. While in Paris, he enrolled at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. After his studies, a government position took him to New York where new friendships, new circles and novel opportunities led him to settle in the city and dedicate himself fully to art. Doğançay sought inspiration from the city walls and found it. Of the mind that walls bear the traces of a city’s mood, past, injustice, needs and hopes, the artist journeyed across the streets of the world (he has travelled to over 100 countries) as if in an open book for him to read. The urban language is in turn reflected in his work, the composition, colours and aesthetic of which transform the canvas into a wall of its own. In that regard, Homage to calligraphy poetically plays on the notion of surface. The abstract blue vernacular – its curves and right to left momentum echoing Arabic calligraphy – is indeed ripped at the centre thanks to the powder of optical illusion, ‘punched through’ as to reveal what is behind. The practice recalls Lucio Fontana’s slashed canvases, except here Doğançay’s intervention is purely the result of optical trickery. A pierced painting in place of a wrecked wall.

More artists from the following country:
Türkiye

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Burhan DOĞANÇAY – Homage to Calligraphy

Homage to Calligraphy

Burhan DOĞANÇAY

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