Turkey

About

Anatolia holds some of the oldest monumental art anywhere: the carved stone pillars of Göbekli Tepe date to around 9500 BC, and the houses of Çatalhöyük had painted walls. Hittite kings carved gods into rock faces. The Seljuk Turks built mosques and caravanserais with deeply carved stone portals, and Ottoman artists developed an imperial style of domed mosques, Iznik tiles, manuscript painting and marbled paper.

In the late 19th century Osman Hamdi Bey painted Orientalist scenes from an Ottoman point of view, most famously The Tortoise Trainer (1906). After the Republic was founded in 1923, the D Group of the 1930s brought Cubist and Constructivist ideas to Istanbul, and Fahrelnissa Zeid painted vast, kaleidoscopic abstractions. Later artists moved between cultures: Erol Akyavaş drew on Islamic manuscripts and mysticism, Bedri Baykam took on politics and art history, and Taner Ceylan paints hyperrealist scenes that play on Orientalist painting.