The exhibition “Semiha Berksoy, with Love”, curated by Derya Yücel, held parallel to the launch of the most comprehensive book published on Semiha Berksoy opened on 20 January 2017 at O’Art with a collaboration between Odeabank and Galerist.
The exhibition “Semiha Berksoy, with Love” to be held parallel to the launch of “Semiha Berksoy: Catalogue Raisonné” - a book containing all the known works of Semiha Berksoy and published by Galerist Publications with the support of Odeabank - brings together the artist’s paintings that focus on love in its many forms, and her previously unseen sketches. The exhibition, curated by Derya Yücel, opened on 20 January at O’Art, and shares with art lovers the artist’s paintings that find inspiration in the flow of sound, aria, words, and mise-en-scène, and the passionate expression of love as the source of Berksoy’s love and art.
The book “Semiha Berksoy: Catalogue Raisonné”, published by Galerist Publications with the support of Odeabank, was edited by Derya Yücel and features articles by Dieter Ronte, Rosa Martinez, Robert Wilson, Ferit Edgü, Levent Çalıkoğlu, Beral Madra, Dikmen Gürün and Zeliha Berksoy. Public talks on this, the most comprehensive book on Semiha Berksoy, and the exhibition “Semiha Berksoy, with Love” will host İlber Ortaylı, Zeliha Berksoy, Bedri Baykam and Melih Güneş on 11 February 2017, Saturday, and Derya Yücel, Evrim Altuğ and Esra Aliçavuşoğlu on 4 March 2017, Saturday, at O’Art.
Semiha Berksoy, the high dramatic soprano, painter, poet, actress and performance artist that we lost in 2004, was a unique artist with her attitude that aimed at establishing a spontaneous and sincere relationship between different fields of art, her pioneering identity both in terms of her way of life and her creative approach, her unfailing passion and ambition and her determination to render her art permanent. A leading force in art in Turkey who sought to create a “Gesamtkunstwerk”, or a unity of all the arts, Semiha Berksoy transformed her own life through her lyrical, dramatic and melancholic paintings into a unique mythology with her unique figuration, personal iconography and free approach to form. The love she felt towards art, opera, theatre, painting, nature, living beings and the people that inspired her created the most distinctive aura of the paintings that reflected Semiha Berksoy’s world.