Artwork from the 19th to 21st century come together in İzmir

The Folkart Gallery in İzmir is hosting its eighth "Cornerstones of Turkish Painting" exhibition, which opened last Friday and displays works by 130 Turkish painters that have shaped the future of Turkish art. Works by Şeker Ahmet Pasha, Osman Hamdi, Hoca Ali Rıza, Abdülmecid II, Hikmet Onat, Feyhaman Duran, Naci Kalmukoğlu and Burhan Doğançay can be viewed in the exhibition under the auspices of a project directed by Fahri Özdemir and curated by İlkay S. Deniz.

Attending the opening ceremony, İzmir Chief of Police Hüseyin Aşkın, Folkart Gallery Advisory Committee Chairman Doğan Hızlan and many leading names of İzmir's business community came together with art lovers to mark the beginning of the exhibition, along with theater artist Volkan Severcan.


Artwork by Abidin Dino, who lived between 1913 and 1993.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, Folkart Gallery Chairman of the Board of Directors Mesut Sancak highlighted the importance of public support that visitors to the gallery provide for artists, noting that they will continue to support this cause. He noted that they collated the works for the exhibition with the support and help of more than 40 collectors who entrusted some of the most precious works in their collections, thanking them for their dedication to art.

Chairman of the Advisory Committee Hızlan stated that the contribution of such an exhibition to Turkish art and the works of 130 artists on display collectively for the first time mark an iconic moment in the gallery's history. Thanks to the collectors who wanted to share some of the most special works from their collections with art lovers, the exhibition includes many works being shared with the public for the first time, ranging from academic paintings to the generation of Osman Hamdi, from Romanticism to the Çallı/1914 generation, from Impressionism to the autonomous genre and from Constructivism to the Neo-group, representing historic genres of Turkish art. The exhibition also includes works public arts members, expressionists and post-modernists on landscapes, portraits, auto-portraits, still-life paintings and more.


Artwork by Halil Pasha, who lived between 1857 and 1939.

The previous seven exhibitions at the Folkart Gallery, which was established in 2015 to become the largest art gallery in Turkey, were "Ellerin Büyüsü" ("The Magic of Hands"), "Bir Hürriyet Türküsü" ("A Song of Freedom"), "İşçiler" ("Workers"), "Kara Afrika Sanatı" ("Dark African Art"), "Kanın Beyaz Sesi" ("The White Sound of Blood") and "Kan Kırmızı" ("Blood-Red"). The last one was the retrospective exhibition "Sevmek Güzel Meslek Reis ("Loving is a Great Profession, Chief") by famous Turkish artist Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu.