Semiha Berksoy: Retrospective

Singing in Full Colour

Hamburger Bahnhof is dedicating a major retrospective to the Turkish painter and opera singer Semiha Berksoy (1910 - 2004) in the east wing of the museum.

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  Semiha Berksoy, Fidelio, Detail, 1975

• Semiha Berksoy

• Semiha Berksoy, My Mother Playing the Oud, Detail, 1958

• Semiha Berksoy, The 'C' Sound, Detail, 1964

• Semiha Berksoy, Fear, 1971

• Semiha Berksoy, Suicide, 1997

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Berksoy studied at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin in the 1930s and inspired the Berlin public. The exhibition spans more than six decades of her artistic work with a focus on her painting and traces Berksoy's ongoing connection to Berlin. It presents central themes in Berksoy's work: the bond with her mother, the painter Fatma Saime, the connections to Turkish artists such as the poet Nazim Hikmet, iconic opera roles and places and events that shaped her career. With more than 80 paintings and works on paper as well as numerous archive documents, film clips and sound recordings, the exhibition shows Berksoy's significant influence on the cultural landscape in Turkey and beyond.

After Semiha Berksoy (1910 - 2004) had great success at the opera in Turkey in the early 1930s, she received a scholarship from the Turkish government and studied at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin from November 1936 to July 1939. In 1939, she played the leading role in Ariadne auf Naxos, which was performed to great acclaim in Berlin on the occasion of Richard Strauss' 75th birthday. With the outbreak of the Second World War, she had to return to Turkey. There, together with the German actor and director Carl Ebert, she supported the founding of the Turkish State Opera and Ballet as well as the Ankara State Conservatory. She remained active as an opera singer into old age and in 2000, four years before her death, sang the Liebestod aria from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde at the Lincoln Centre in New York. Her links to Berlin remained strong: in 1969, the Haus am Lützowplatz held a solo exhibition of her paintings.

She has been exhibited in group exhibitions such as ‘Contemporary Art from Istanbul’ (Haus der Kulturen der Welt, 1998) and ‘Istanbul Next Wave’ (Martin-Gropius-Bau, 2010). Berksoy's paintings have been shown at international biennials, most recently with a portrait of her mother, the painter Fatma Saime, from 1965 at this year's Venice Biennial. The retrospective at Hamburger Bahnhof conveys the connection between opera and visual art in Berksoy's work. The exhibition chapters are organised like opera vignettes, in which the figures in Berksoy's paintings meet the visitors like characters on a stage. They are presented together with rare sound and video recordings from the 1930s to the early 2000s.

Runtime: Fri, 06/12/2024 to Sun, 11/05/2025

Price info: Hamburger Bahnhof. Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart + temporary exhibitions

Price: €16.00

Reduced price: €8.00

Takes place here:

• Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum für Gegenwart

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