Turkish Painting in the Arkas Collection

The selection compiled from the Arkas Collection offers an opportunity to examine the structural phases through which art evolved during Turkey’s modernization process. Beginning with the generation of court and military painters, this journey continues with the 1914 Generation and their contemporaries, reflecting the aesthetic understanding of the period, artistic education, worldview, and the values of the newly founded Republic.

During the Early Republican era, artists diversified their visual language through the academic training they received in Paris and their engagement with Western painting traditions. Turkish landscape painting, which initially developed through a nature-centered approach, became enriched by the subjective interpretations of the artists of the 1914 Generation, transforming depictions of nature into a space for personal expression. From the 1950s onward, in parallel with the rise of ruralist discourse, Anatolian panoramas, traditional ways of life, and folk culture gained prominence. Beginning in the 1960s, artists developed new artistic directions by blending local elements with contemporary Western approaches. In the 1970s, amid a climate marked by social and political turmoil, figurative works with strong social content and approaches exploring the individual’s inner world came to the forefront. The 1968 Generation regarded the human figure not merely as a formal element, but also as a vehicle for existential and social representation.

Through works that reflect the spirit of their time, the exhibition “Turkish Painting in the Arkas Collection” offers an opportunity to evaluate the historical transformation of Turkish painting. Going beyond the role of a visual archive, it also serves as a space for historical memory, cultural testimony, and intellectual expression.