Turkish Magnate Puts His Passion on Display

By SUSANNE FOWLER

Bahadir Taskin/Papko/Oner Kocabeyoglu Collection

“Farewell Warsaw,” a 1961 work by Nejad Melih Devrim.

ISTANBUL — Art collecting is often a very private passion, but the textile magnate Oner Kocabeyoglu has taken his passion very public with the exhibition “20 Turkish Artists of the XXth Century” at Santralistanbul, an art, music and education space at the tip of the Golden Horn.

The show, through June 19, features more than 430 works by 18 painters and two sculptors, accumulated by Mr. Kocabeyoglu and selected and arranged over three floors in collaboration with the writer and art critic Ferit Edgu.

At first, visitors may think they are seeing earlier works by Picasso or Klimt, but many of the paintings are by Turks who lived in France after 1940 as part of the École de Paris wave, working, studying and carousing with the Westerners creating masterpieces.

The exhibition covers a particularly interesting period for Turkish painting, Mr. Edgu said by telephone, in that it shows how Turkish artists, from a Western point of view, “caught up” to what was being painted by the Europeans. And they did this, in many cases, by packing up and moving to Paris.

via Turkish Magnate Puts His Passion on Display – NYTimes.com.