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Lot Essay
'I doubt I ever would have become so obsessed with walls if I hadn't come to New York' .
(Burhan Dogançay quoted in R. Moyer (ed.), Dogançay, New York 1986, p. 39).
Born in Istanbul in 1929 a few years after the establishment of the Turkish Republic and the abolition of the Ottoman caliphate, Burhan Dogançay started painting alongside his father, a military officer by profession and an Impressionist artist in his time of leisure. In 1950, Dogançay graduated in law from the University of Ankara and later settled in Paris where he earned a doctorate of economics while attending art courses at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. Upon his return to Turkey, he worked for the Ministry of Commerce and was soon sent to New York as a diplomat. His years in the city sparked the transformation of his artistic practice and in 1963, walking on 86th Street, Dogançay stumbled upon a wall with the remains of a poster and various graffitis and spontaneous collages, what he called 'the most beautiful abstract painting.' (The artist quoted in B. Taylor, "Dogançay's World", in A. Doganay and B. Temel (eds.), Burhan Dogançay: Fifty years of Urban Walls, exh. cat. Munich 2012, p. 18). Following this discovery, he moved away from his diplomatic career to dedicate himself to art.
He travelled in over a hundred countries, documenting their walls as if to capture time and the societies' preoccupations. To him, the whole human experience was reflected on walls since the prehistoric era and walls were looked at like an archeological and anthropological study. Dogançay found beauty in decay, in the leftover fragments of texts and the peeling posters that decorated the city's walls. His obsession and fascination with walls grew with time and he explored their urban surface like a canvas upon which are depicted one's conceptions of time, place and memory. The more cluttered and layered the walls were, the more they fascinated him as they carried a part of history and depicted personal narratives and were a testament of past as much as present. Like the French Nouveaux Réalistes Jacques Villeglé and Raymond Hains in Paris and the Italian Mimmo Rotella, Dogançay sought to bring life and art together. In the words of the acclaimed art critic Pierre Restany as he described the works of the Nouveaux Réalistes, it was about 'a poetic recycling of urban industrial and advertising reality'.
The present work painted in New York in 1974, from Dogançay's Breakthrough series is an outstanding example and the sister piece to Red and Black Composition no. 5 (1974) that was acquired by the Guggenheim in New York. Moving away from his earlier wall texture and collage works depicting a refined and rhythmical composition, Dogançay explores the optical effects of light and shadow as the shadows cast across the surface of his canvas; he subtly points out and increases the complexity of the illusionistic torn sheets spotted in the urban space. The work itself thus becomes an interpretation of light while it recalls certain aspects of the cursive Islamic calligraphy, revealing the complete aesthetic heritage of the artist. Minimal yet utterly powerful, the present composition with its interplay of geometric forms encapsulates Burhan Dogançay's artistic oeuvre and is undeniably a masterpiece by the artist.
His works are held in leading museums such as the Guggenheim, the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Other museums that have acquired his works include the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. and the Museu de Arte Moderna in Rio de Janeiro. Solo exhibitions of Dogançay's works have been held in various institutions around the world including the Centre Pompidou in Paris as early as 1982, the Seibu Museum of Art in Tokyo in 1989 and the Siegerlandmuseum in Germany in 2003. A year before his passing, a major retrospective of his work entitled Fifty Years of Urban Walls was presented at Istanbul Modern. A museum dedicated to his career opened in the Istanbul in 2004. Burhan Dogançay passed away in 2013.
(Burhan Dogançay quoted in R. Moyer (ed.), Dogançay, New York 1986, p. 39).
Born in Istanbul in 1929 a few years after the establishment of the Turkish Republic and the abolition of the Ottoman caliphate, Burhan Dogançay started painting alongside his father, a military officer by profession and an Impressionist artist in his time of leisure. In 1950, Dogançay graduated in law from the University of Ankara and later settled in Paris where he earned a doctorate of economics while attending art courses at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. Upon his return to Turkey, he worked for the Ministry of Commerce and was soon sent to New York as a diplomat. His years in the city sparked the transformation of his artistic practice and in 1963, walking on 86th Street, Dogançay stumbled upon a wall with the remains of a poster and various graffitis and spontaneous collages, what he called 'the most beautiful abstract painting.' (The artist quoted in B. Taylor, "Dogançay's World", in A. Doganay and B. Temel (eds.), Burhan Dogançay: Fifty years of Urban Walls, exh. cat. Munich 2012, p. 18). Following this discovery, he moved away from his diplomatic career to dedicate himself to art.
He travelled in over a hundred countries, documenting their walls as if to capture time and the societies' preoccupations. To him, the whole human experience was reflected on walls since the prehistoric era and walls were looked at like an archeological and anthropological study. Dogançay found beauty in decay, in the leftover fragments of texts and the peeling posters that decorated the city's walls. His obsession and fascination with walls grew with time and he explored their urban surface like a canvas upon which are depicted one's conceptions of time, place and memory. The more cluttered and layered the walls were, the more they fascinated him as they carried a part of history and depicted personal narratives and were a testament of past as much as present. Like the French Nouveaux Réalistes Jacques Villeglé and Raymond Hains in Paris and the Italian Mimmo Rotella, Dogançay sought to bring life and art together. In the words of the acclaimed art critic Pierre Restany as he described the works of the Nouveaux Réalistes, it was about 'a poetic recycling of urban industrial and advertising reality'.
The present work painted in New York in 1974, from Dogançay's Breakthrough series is an outstanding example and the sister piece to Red and Black Composition no. 5 (1974) that was acquired by the Guggenheim in New York. Moving away from his earlier wall texture and collage works depicting a refined and rhythmical composition, Dogançay explores the optical effects of light and shadow as the shadows cast across the surface of his canvas; he subtly points out and increases the complexity of the illusionistic torn sheets spotted in the urban space. The work itself thus becomes an interpretation of light while it recalls certain aspects of the cursive Islamic calligraphy, revealing the complete aesthetic heritage of the artist. Minimal yet utterly powerful, the present composition with its interplay of geometric forms encapsulates Burhan Dogançay's artistic oeuvre and is undeniably a masterpiece by the artist.
His works are held in leading museums such as the Guggenheim, the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Other museums that have acquired his works include the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. and the Museu de Arte Moderna in Rio de Janeiro. Solo exhibitions of Dogançay's works have been held in various institutions around the world including the Centre Pompidou in Paris as early as 1982, the Seibu Museum of Art in Tokyo in 1989 and the Siegerlandmuseum in Germany in 2003. A year before his passing, a major retrospective of his work entitled Fifty Years of Urban Walls was presented at Istanbul Modern. A museum dedicated to his career opened in the Istanbul in 2004. Burhan Dogançay passed away in 2013.