Semiha Berksoy – National Gallery of Contemporary Art, Germany

Accessibility information: Due to a broken stairlift, the exhibition is currently only accessible via the canal-side entrance of the restaurant. Hamburger Bahnhof apologizes for the inconvenience and is working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.

The Hamburger Bahnhof presents the first comprehensive retrospective of the Turkish painter and opera singer Semiha Berksoy in Germany. Berksoy studied at the Berlin University of Music in the 1930s and captivated Berlin audiences. The exhibition spans over six decades of artistic output, focusing on painting, and traces Berksoy’s ongoing connection to Berlin. It presents central themes in Berksoy’s work: her connection to her mother, the painter Fatma Saime, and to Turkish artists such as the poet Nazim Hikmet, iconic operatic roles, and places and events that shaped her career. Featuring more than 80  paintings and works on paper, as well as numerous archival documents, film excerpts, and audio recordings, the exhibition demonstrates Berksoy’s significant influence on the cultural landscape in Turkey and beyond.

After Semiha Berksoy (1910–2004) enjoyed great success in opera in Turkey in the early 1930s, she received a scholarship from the Turkish government and studied at the Berlin Academy of Music from 1936 to 1939. In 1939, she played the leading role in Ariadne auf Naxos, which  was performed by the school to mark Richard Strauss’s 75th birthday. With the outbreak of World War II, she returned to Turkey. There, together with the German actor and director Carl Ebert, she supported the founding of the Turkish State Opera and Ballet and the Ankara State Conservatory. She remained active as an opera singer well into old age and, as recently as 2000, sang the Liebestodes aria from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde at New York’s Lincoln Centre. Her connections to Berlin remained strong: in 1969, the house on Lützowplatz exhibited her paintings. She has been exhibited in group exhibitions such as “Current Art from Istanbul” (Haus der Kulturen der Welt, 1998) and “Istanbul Next Wave” (Gropiusbau, 2010). Berksoy’s paintings have been shown at international biennials, most recently this year with a portrait of her mother, the painter Fatma Saime from 1965, at the 60th  Venice Biennale. The retrospective at the Hamburger Bahnhof conveys the connection between opera and the visual arts in Berksoy’s work. The exhibition chapters are structured like operatic vignettes, in which the figures in Berksoy’s paintings encounter visitors like characters on a stage. They are presented alongside rare audio and video recordings from the 1930s to the 2000s.

Exhibition catalogue

Accompanying the exhibition is the second special edition of the Hamburger Bahnhof catalog series, edited by Silvana Editoriale with 280  pages, available at the Walther König bookstore for  €20. ISBN: 9788836660360

Curatorial Team

The exhibition is curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath, directors of Hamburger Bahnhof – National Gallery of Contemporary Art. Emily Finkelstein and Agnes Rameder are assistant curators of Hamburger Bahnhof – National Gallery of Contemporary Art.

The exhibition is supported by Hamburger Bahnhof International Companions e. V.

A special exhibition of the Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin