Burhan Dogançay

Born in 1929 in Istanbul, Burhan Dogançay learned the rudiments of art from his father, Adil Dogançay and Arif Kaptan, two famous Turkish painters. He first studied law in Ankara and then continued his university education in Paris where he obtained a doctorate in economics. During his stay in the French capital, from 1950 to 1955, he attended the Académie de la Grande Chaumière.

On his return to Turkey, Burhan Dogançay pursued a diplomatic career while pursuing artistic activities. He exhibited regularly with his father. In 1964, he decided to devote himself solely to art and made New York his main residence. He also works and lives in Istanbul and Bodrum in Turkey.

An inveterate traveller, Burhan Dogancay travels to more than a hundred cities throughout his life. He is fascinated by urban walls, which he considers to be the barometers of our society through which we can observe the passage of time, but also many social, political and economic manifestations. His work is full of motifs, signs and symbols found on these walls, which he then saved definitively with his camera.

An inexhaustible source of inspiration, these elements are first worked with drawings and sketches, then, once the composition is found, the artist uses a multitude of materials to transform them into a collage. Each work is thus born from a succession of steps: a layer of paint is applied over the entire surface, on which the artist adds various elements that he then sprays with inscriptions. These works do not depict a particular city or wall, but combine different memories and different countries. Burhan Dogançay, who died in 2013 at the age of 83, was the first Turkish artist to be represented by the Metropolitan Museum. He is now exhibited in more than 70 museums around the world.