Identity seek in the figures of Semiha Berksoy

Semiha Berksoy, who experienced nearly a century-long life with full of art, is one of the most important names in the field of modern and contemporary Turkish art. Besides being the first opera singer in Turkey, she put her signature under a great deal of work in various fields of art such as theatre, literature, cinema and visual arts. She performed her art with gesamkunstwerk (a unity of all the arts) philosophy combining all fields of art together. She created a unique productive language on her own path by putting herself to the center of art without participating any art communities and movements in visual arts and without having no problem with her style. From this point of view she used common images which would give way to thematic and and categorical study. Going beyond the paintings and being involved in her semantic world are necessary to comprehend the source of images in Semiha Berksoy's paintings and to consider the use of these. Because when the source of the images reflecting her own personal life is taken into consideration, the sound in her portrait and self-portrait starts to make sense. In this search; on analysing the paintings, it is important not to make misguided and personal determinations. "Artist-directed criticism" method was used by paying regard to artist's own biography to get through to source of the figures. These sources were varied with reading detailed information about artist's family life, her surrondings, her close friends and the things that fed the artist through her whole life. Artist's private life and the career she built in other fields of art were analysed under the name of different subjects to make her " artist identity" clear in a scientific way.