Welcome back to AL-MONITOR Istanbul.

Love is in the air — and in the galleries, on the plates and between the pages. As Valentine’s Day approaches, rebellious master of color Ibrahim Calli takes over the historic dockyards of Halic, the romantic Golden Horn. On Bagdat Caddesi, Corvino makes a strong case for candlelight and cacio e pepe. For devoted art lovers, the second edition of the Art Show, with conferences and many galleries at the chic Etiler, is on for the weekend. For those who prefer their romance in verse, we turn to fifteen centuries of Turkish love poetry.

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Nazlan (@NazlanEr on X)

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1. Leading the week: The Color of a Restless Life 

Ibrahim Calli’s delicate landscapes displayed in Istanbul Art Museum (Photo bkz Iletisim)

With his unruly brush, bohemian temperament and unapologetically lush palette, Ibrahim Calli was one of the defining painters bridging the late Ottoman Empire and the early Republic. Calli resisted both academic rigidity and moral restraint, insisting instead on light, movement and a life lived at full chromatic volume.

That restless spirit now takes center stage at Istanbul Art, housed in the historic dockyard of Halic, once dedicated to shipbuilding and repair, now reimagined as a civic space for culture. “The Memory of Color, the Spirit of the Brush, A Passionate Life Lived Through Color: Ibrahim Calli” brings together 64 oil paintings spanning his career, alongside 24 archival photographs.

The exhibition includes Calli’s portraits of Turkey founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and journalist Yunus Nadi, situating him firmly within the cultural and intellectual architecture of the early Republic. A highlight is his portrait of Mehmed the Conqueror, a fitting presence in a dockyard long associated with Ottoman maritime power. Nearby, we see peaceful portraits of daily life along the Bosphorus, women chatting to each other

Born in 1882 in Cal, a small town in western Anatolia, Calli arrived in Istanbul as a restless young man and entered the Fine Arts School, then under the influence of Reformist painters such as Seker Ahmet Pasa. Like many artists of his generation, he was shaped by an empire in decline, caught between admiration for European modernity and the anxiety of political collapse. His early works remained grounded in academic discipline, but they already hinted at........

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