Semiha Berksoy

Semiha Berksoy was born in Istanbul in 1910 and died there in 2004. Alongside her career as an opera singer, she drew and painted on canvas, cardboard, hardboard and sheets, producing portraits, self-portraits and large paintings of her operatic roles.

She studied singing in Istanbul from 1928 and painting at İstanbul Devlet Güzel Sanatlar Akademisi from 1929. From 1936 to 1939 she trained in singing and opera at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin. In 1939 she sang Ariadne there for Richard Strauss's seventy-fifth birthday. With Carl Ebert she helped establish the Turkish State Opera and Ballet and the Ankara State Conservatory. Her subjects include the stage, the poet Nâzım Hikmet and her mother, as in Annem Ressam Fatma Saime (My Mother, the Painter Fatma Saime), 1965. She rejected labels such as Expressionism or Fauvism, and the Berlin retrospective presented her approach as "Semiha-ism".

The Turkish government named her a State Artist in 1998. Solo shows include Haus am Lützowplatz, Berlin, 1969, Resim ve Heykel Müzesi, Ankara, 1974, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, 2024, and Istanbul Modern, 2026. Group shows include Manifesta 2, 1998, the 51st and 60th Venice Biennales, 2005 and 2024, and Sharjah Biennial 14, 2019. Her work is held by Istanbul Modern, Kunstmuseum Bonn and Resim ve Heykel Müzesi, Istanbul. Galerist, Istanbul, represents the estate.