The works by the American artist Romare Bearden, which he has compiled under the title of “A Black Odyssey” as inspired by the Odysseus saga of Homeros, are coming to İstanbul following New York and Paris. At the exhibition, Bearden is accompanied by a special selection from the paintings of Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu.
The Romare Bearden travelling exhibition, which has first opened in 2014 at the Miriam & Ira D. Wallach gallery, has been offered to the viewers at the Columbia Global Centers Europe in Paris in January, together with the Odysseus drawings by Henri Matisse.
The exhibition, coming to İstanbul as its third stop, will welcome the viewers together with a special selection from the Eyüboğlu family collection, where one of the most famous representatives of Turkish modern painting, Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu has blended the Anatolia theme with the Western technique. In this collection, the artist’s works such as Torun, Seni Düşünürken, Baltabaş Kemençeci, Kağnı, Ana ve Çoban, Aşık Veysel, Saz Çalan and Yavuz Geliyor Yavuz will be exhibited.
The exhibition aims to bring together two artists, who are contemporaries and have both set on a journey in their own pasts following the tracks of a sort of universal Odysseus. The artists, who were born in 1911 in different geographies of the world, and have been nurtured by the works of Matisse and Picasso in the artistic climate of Paris in the 1950s during the most fruitful periods of their careers, have produced unforgettable works in similar pursuits although their paths have never crossed.
While Bearden, who is one of the important representatives of the Harlem Renaissance, designs a universal Afro-American identity based on the Odysseus epic of Homeros, Eyüboğlu who was inspired by the Blue Anatolianism movement, was tracking a new Anatolian identity that embraced all civilizations that had left their marks on these lands.
The exhibition to be realized under the curatorship the Columbia University Zora Neale Hurston English Language and Comparative Literature Professor Dr. Robert G. O’Meally and Columbia University doctoral candidate Merve Tezcanlı İspahani, will also host various panels and events. Organized through the collaboration of Columbia Global Centers Turkey and the İstanbul Consulate General of Greece, the “Blue Travelers: the Art of Romare Bearden and Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu” exhibition may be viewed at the Sismanoglio Megaro building of the İstanbul Consulate General of Greece, located on the İstiklal Avenue, until May 17, 2015.
