Istanbul's Sabancı Museum celebrates 15th year with Feyhaman Duran exhibition

To celebrate its 15th anniversary, the Sabancı University Sakıp Sabancı Museum (SSM) in Istanbul presents a new exhibition "Feyhaman Duran: Between Two Worlds," featuring work spanning the Ottoman and Republican eras.

Duran's technique carries traces of the transformation from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic, and the Sabancı Museum exhibition reveals all the clashes and the developments of the era. It reflects the influences that shaped the art of Duran, who left an empire on the brink of collapse to arrive at the home of art in Paris before returning to a country in revolutionary transformation.

Duran, greatly influenced by impressionist movement during his education in Paris, took up the habit of carrying his canvas to various spots across the city to just sit back and paint. 

Duran's landscapes of Süleymaniye, Bosphorus and Istanbul's islands provide a comprehensive glimpse of the city's history.

His work in the southeastern province of Gaziantep as part of the Republican People's Party's (CHP) "Nationwide Journeys" documents the ideological structure of the era, while revealing the extent of his talent through his use of various techniques quite different from those he uses in Istanbul.

Throughout his artistic life, Duran articulated his inner experience of amalgamating the East and the West through his paintings. Due to the demand for portraits in the early Republican years, he has been mostly known for his work in this style but he was equally proficient in other styles such as still-lives and landscapes. 

In addition to his portraits, the nudes he painted during his education in Paris, landscapes in various regions and still-lives where he used Ottoman calligraphy as objects in his compositions,...