Taksim Square

Nazmi Ziya Güran's 1935 painting ‘Taksim Square’ is among the significant works that reflect the artist's interest in the urban life and symbolic spaces of modernising Turkey. Originally conceived as a triptych, the work was exhibited in 1936 at the İnkılâp Sergisi held at the Ankara People's House under the title 'Old and New Istanbul', displayed within a single frame alongside 'An Old Street' and a third painting whose present whereabouts are unknown. In this context, ‘Taksim Square’ occupies the centre of the triptych, setting the transformation brought by modernisation in visual contrast with the street views representing 'old' Istanbul.
 

Nazmi Ziya's painting reflects not only the appearance of the square in the 1930s but also the symbolic meaning attributed to it. Taksim had long functioned as a central public space serving different social constituencies of Istanbul; from the nineteenth century in particular, it became, together with the Pera district where Levantine, non-Muslim, and minority communities were concentrated, a centre of secular life and cultural diversity. With the proclamation of the Republic, a new layer of symbolism was constructed upon this complex past: Taksim became one of the showcases of state ideology and the stage for the modern individual's public visibility.
 

The Republic Monument at the centre of the composition is rendered as the expression in marble and bronze of the new regime's ideals. The character of a 'city square' that the monument conferred upon the space made it the focal point of public ceremonies, celebrations, and collective memory. The apartment buildings rising in the background lend a new aspect to the Istanbul skyline in keeping with the urban planning sensibility of the period. Apartment living represented, for some social groups at this time, the attainment of middle-class status, and for others an ascent to a modernising way of life. The apartment buildings in the background of the painting are therefore not merely an architectural element but a marker of class and ideological transformation.
 

The figures in the foreground give visible form to the Republic's vision of modern urban life. Women dressed in the fashions of the day, in two-piece suits with hats, gloves, and heeled shoes; men in suits and hats; families walking with children — all reflect the new norms the Republic sought to establish for public life. The scene embodies the cultural modernisation ideals of the early Republic and the growing presence of women in the public sphere.
 

Nazmi Ziya graduated from the Sanâyi-i Nefîse Mektebi in 1908 and continued his training in Paris. During his time in France, he came under the influence of the Impressionist painters whose work was shown in the Paris salons and who adopted an approach grounded in direct observation in their open-air paintings. This tendency became widespread among the artists of what is known as the Generation of 1914, with works reflecting the changing effects of natural light and taking everyday life as their subject coming to the fore.
 

For the French Impressionists, the primary stage of modernity was the Paris transformed by Baron Haussmann: broad boulevards, symbolic monuments, ordered parks, and the bustle of city life became, in this period, both a critical and an aesthetic object of modern urban existence. Nazmi Ziya brought a comparable sensibility to his search to document and interpret the spatial transformations Istanbul was undergoing, seeking in works such as ‘Taksim Square’ to decode the visual language of the Republic.
 

With the proclamation of the Republic, architecture and urban planning became the most visible instruments of modern national identity. Taksim Square, with the installation of the Republic Monument by the Italian sculptor Pietro Canonica in 1928, became one of Istanbul's new centres, transformed into the stage for official ceremonies, celebrations, and public life. Nazmi Ziya's painting does more than document this transformation; it offers it as an aesthetic interpretation to social memory.