Aliye Berger

Aliye Berger (1903 – 1974)

Aliye Berger was born in 1903 on Büyükada, an island in Istanbul. She was a member of a family that had contributed many master artists to Turkish art. Her sister was Fahrelnisa Zeid, one of Turkey’s first female painters, and her brother was Cevat Şakir Kabaağaçlı, who was known by the name “Halikarnas Fisherman”. One of the turning points in Aliye Berger’s life was when she met Karl Berger, who had taken refuge in Turkey after participating in the Hungarian uprising. Through him, Berger also experienced true and eternal love. After 23 years of a love story, they got married. However, six months after this marriage, Karl Berger died of a heart attack at the Büyükada Pier.

To overcome her depression, Aliye Berger went to London to be with her sister Fahrelnisa Zeid, and she started painting again.

From 1947 to 1950, she attended John Buchland Wright’s studio and did engraving works. After returning to Turkey in 1951, she opened her first exhibition in Istanbul. This was followed by exhibitions in Ankara, London, Vienna, Paris, and Islamabad. She won the first prize in Yapı Kredi Bank’s competition with her first oil painting work due to the International Art Critics Association’s (AICA) congress held in Istanbul in 1954, and she won the second prize at the second Tehran Biennial a year later.

While Aliye Berger created drawings and oil paintings, she mainly produced works in the woodcut printing technique, using black-and-white tones. Using sandpaper, butcher paper, and muslin as materials, the artist reflected the patterns of daily life and various corners of Istanbul, sometimes realistically and sometimes fantastically, with an original lyricism and expressionism.