Les murs de Burhan Doğançay

Upon his arrival in New York in the 1960s, Istanbul-born artist Burhan Doğançay (1929–2013) became deeply fascinated by the visual aesthetics of urban walls and murals. His interest focused on exploring public space and its significance as a forum for the debate of social and political as well as artistic norms. He continuously sketched and photographed walls and doorways, transferring many of the captured motifs into paintings. Over more than four decades, Doğançay compiled a vast body of photographic testimonials of urban life and discourse which he titled Walls of the World: a unique archive comprising some 30,000 images from 114 countries.This bilingual French–German book features a selection of Doğançay’s paintings and photographs from various series within the entire Walls of the World collection. The pictures — like the walls themselves — are the result of superimposed layers and techniques. Through this use of different painting and collage techniques, they reflect the temporal dimension of these surfaces with the scribbles, posters, scraps, and graffiti accumulated on them. The essays that supplement the images investigate Doğançay’s ongoing engagement with the urban wall as a projection surface as well as his method of combining photography and sketching as the basis for his remarkable graphic and painted art.Text in French and German.

Bénédicte De Donker is the curator of prints and drawings at the Musée d’art et d’histoire in Geneva.