ITALY - VENICE, Ca’ Pesaro – International Gallery of Modern Art - Extended to August 24, 2008

One of the most significant living Turkish Modern Painters, Abdurrahman Öztoprak (Istanbul, 1927) seizes his cosmic power of harmony from love, exaltations of the heart, and passion. The paintings compiled from Elgiz Collection of the artist mature period, must be evaluated primarily as the result of the dialogue between the artist and the collector. As for the fundamental phenomenon that directs the exhibition, it is the verse The Sublime Figures of the Leaping Heart from the Ninth Duino Elegy of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. The most significant fact that brings together Öztoprak’s works with Rilke’s verses is the exceedingly sensitive, impassioned, almost “unearthly” approach of both artists to art. Öztoprak as a painter who can genuinely speak the words of the angels, reached to a spectacular point interpreting the eastern gold, silver, copper tones and ornament phenomenon within the western abstract art movement through his art life over half a century. The exhibition has the features that can be interpreted as a cultural bridge between Istanbul and Venice because of the artist’s works, skilfully interpreting the intercultural dialogue, which is exhibited for the first time in Italy.