Painter Haydar Özay's exhibition, titled 'From Don Quixote to Paintings with Trains, from Petöfi to İnce Memed: Portraits of Literature and History,' which opened on December 10th, will be on display at the Maltepe Municipality Türkan Saylan Cultural Center until December 30, 2025.
The exhibition, featuring 30 paintings including 'Paintings with Trains,' presents select examples from Özay's work spanning from his early works to the present day. We spoke with Özay about his new exhibition.
- You named your exhibition 'From Don Quixote to Paintings with Trains'...
There are paintings featuring Cervantes, Sancho Panza, and Rozinante. I'm exhibiting four of my 40 paintings, which I'm still working on, based on Cervantes' 'Don Quixote de la Mancha,' for the first time. Even now, while my exhibition continues, I'm still working on other scenes of Don Quixote. Those who learn that I'm working on Don Quixote are happy, as if they've met a mutual acquaintance they knew and loved in childhood and never forgot. Actually, the whole exhibition could be called an exhibition of Don Quixotes.
NAZIM HIKMET AND ASHIK VEYSEL SIDE BY SIDE
- You started exhibiting Nazim Hikmet, Ashik Veysel, and Yaşar Kemal independently of their commemoration dates this year...
I added a selection of paintings from Yaşar Kemal's works to the exhibition, including the Legend of Mount Ararat and İnce Memed. It's always gratifying for me to see the great emotional impact that Nazim Hikmet, Ashik Veysel, and Yaşar Kemal evoke in our art-loving people when they are exhibited together.
Even though I've repeated the same exhibition titles in the past, I'm constantly revising my old paintings, striving to perfect and mature them, while also adding new paintings to the collections and exhibiting them consecutively. In my new exhibition at Türkan Saylan, there are no old Aşık Veysel paintings, but there are some being exhibited for the first time.
I also have a painting of Orhan Kemal and Nâzım Hikmet that I previously exhibited in Eyüp, within the landscape of this painting. I reworked the details in the painting for this exhibition, including the gramophone, the books, the Bozdoğan aqueduct in the Golden Horn's sea view, the weeping willow tree, and similar details, along with the two figures.
**I HAVEN'T FORGOTTEN THE FIGHTING POET PETÖFİ**
- This is your third exhibition of Sandor Petöfi since your first exhibition at the Hungarian Cultural Center...
Yes, this time I haven't forgotten Sandor Petöfi, exhibiting his poems along with his work. I haven't forgotten the Petöfis of Istanbul. This was the first step in a trilogy. I continue to work with increasing interest on another great Hungarian poet, Attila Jozsef. The Hungarian Trilogy. I'm preparing something by Franz Liszt as the third part, keeping it ready.
- You mentioned Cervantes' Don Quixote. What other works make this exhibition special for art lovers?
I'm particularly focused on Beethoven. There are others as well. But only one Beethoven painting is here.
There are my first paintings of Goethe's Faust. I thought this was the perfect time for the paintings I made for Goethe's Faust, featuring Mephistopheles, Faust, and Gretchen.
I've also begun exhibiting for the first time my extensive collection of paintings inspired by the poems of Yannis Ritsos.
In particular, there are some paintings of Henrik Ibsen's immortal work, Peer Gynt, that are being shown for the first time in this exhibition.
DON QUIXOTES TOGETHER WITH DON QUIXOTES
- At the beginning of the interview, you said that in your exhibition, they are all Don Quixotes, we have our own Don Quixotes...
While mentioning that Don Quixote set out on his journey with his horse Rozinante, Che Guevara likened himself to Don Quixote in his farewell letter.
My Don Quixote paintings, originating from Spanish literature, are alongside real Don Quixotes.
From Nazım Hikmet to Orhan Kemal, from Karl Marx to Rosa Luxemburg, from Deniz, Yusuf and Hüseyin to Yaşar Kemal's İnce Memed, it's an exhibition we will remember as an exhibition of Don Quixotes.
- Great writers and great revolutionaries are constant subjects of your paintings...
There will be brand new exhibitions and books confirming what you said. Like the great Polish revolutionary poet Adam Mickiewicz, like Tevfik Fikret, like Andersen and Eflatun Cem Güney.
I look forward to welcoming art lovers to my exhibition. In our exhibition, we have many new beginnings ahead of us, things that will continue in the future...
Paintings I made in memory of Karl Marx and Rosa Luxemburg are side by side. The likes of İnce Memed, Deniz, Veysel, and Nazım are in the same room. Along with the first Don Quixotes. In fact, they are all real Don Quixotes!
Source: https://www.aydinlik.com.tr/haber/trenli-resimler-ziyaretcilerini-bekliyor-561126