}

Collage Décollage

Doğançay / Villeglé

May 3 - July 13, 2008

Although from very different origins and cultures, Dogançay (born in Istanbul, Turkey, in 1929) and Villeglé (born in Quimper, France, in 1926) share the same interest in the city. Whereas Dogançay soon felt the need to travel and find out what was happening elsewhere, Villeglé moved to Paris and henceforth participated in the collective “Nouveau Réalisme” adventure. Although Dogançay’s art was originally based primarily on conventional pictorial practices –almost exclusively gouaches and watercolors, standing as a testimony to his numerous journeys– since the mid-1960s he has taken his themes uniquely from images and signs seen on the walls of the cities he has traversed. As of 1949, Villeglé’s art has been based on collecting a world of ready-made “paintings” that are offered to him by “anonymously torn posters” that he saw when exploring the city.

Collage [gluing, pasting] in the first case, décollage [tearing down, unpeeling] in the second: these two practices characterize two sets of attitudes that, if not parallel, converge, and summon up a world of colorful icons founded on the theme of the city or images, absorbed into uncompromisingly abstract compositions. The idea of bringing together two leading artists of their generation in the same exhibition aims to reveal to viewers the similarities, as well as the differences between Dogançay and Villeglé, whose works anticipate, in their own way, the arrival of “graffiti” art as part of the same aesthetic impulse.

Curator: Philippe Piguet

Exhibition Catalogue

Collage Décollage

Collage Décollage

Although from very different origins and cultures, Doğançay (born in Istanbul, Turkey, in 1929) and Villeglé (born in Quimper, France, in 1926) share the same interest in the city. Whereas the...

Giacometti in Paris

Giacometti in Paris

The second part of exhibition illustrates Alberto Giacometti’s relations with Post-Cubist artists and the Surrealist movement between 1922 and 1935, one of the important sculptures series he created during his first years in Paris, and the critical role he played in the art scene of the period.

Face to Face

Face to Face

A firm believer in the idea that a collection needs to be upheld at least by four generations and comparing this continuity to a relay race, Nahit Kabakcı began creating the Huma Kabakcı Collection from the 1980s onwards. 

Nudes With Mirrors

Nudes With Mirrors

Although mythological themes are not commonly encountered in Turkish painting, it is possible to see variations of widespread themes such as the Venus at her Toilet.