09.23.2023-02.11.2024

Museum of Art and History

Burhan Dogançay's walls

In 2018, the MAH received a major donation of works by Turkish artist Burhan Doğançay (1929-2013), who is represented in leading international museums. More than fifty of these works (drawings and paintings) are featured in the exhibition. They all belong to the Walls of Israel series created in 1975.

The artist's interest in urban walls dates back to the mid-1960s, but it wasn't until his 1975 trip to Israel that he embarked on his wildly ambitious Walls of the World project: a unique archive of some 30,000 photographs of walls taken in 114 countries over the course of his career. This material and the sketches he made on site served as the basis for his graphic and painted work, which depicts, reframes, reworks and reinterprets walls from the four corners of the globe, highlighting common aspirations and a universal language.

The exhibition is the subject of a catalog in collaboration with the Kunst Museum Winterthur, which will host a second stage of the exhibition in 2024.

Image
Burhan DOĞANÇAY (1929-2013), Lonely Bird, 1975
Collage, gouache et crayon sur papier
Don de Angela Doğançay, 2018, Inv. D 2018-88
© Succession de Burhan Doğançay
© Musée d'art et d’histoire de Genève