THIS SIDE OF THE AEGEAN FROM A WESTERNER’S BRUSH

16 April 2012 – 30 June 2012

Orientalism has been transferred to the artists’ canvases with the curiosity of the Western worlds towards the East, the desire to explore the unknown, and from time to time the sense of admiration.

The exhibition titled “This Side of the Aegean through the Brush of the Western” covering a timeframe of 150 years brought the viewers in Arkas Art Center with the daily life around Istanbul and Izmir and the lands under the Ottoman reign sometimes through the depictions of Harem and sometimes through the people in local outfits.

Western artists, who could not go beyond Europe once upon a time, started to visit the Ottoman lands of the East more often by land and sea to portray the exotic East and found the opportunity to work here and transferred the unexplored picturesque beauties and people of the East.

In 109 different works portraying the views of the Bosporus, resorts, harem, odalisque, daily life and the city bear the signatures of totally 52 orientalist artists such as Zonaro, De Mango, Preziosi, Brest, Ziem, Curtovich, Warnia-Zarzecki, Boulanger, Ernst.