Divided by the Bosporus Strait, Istanbul straddles two continents— Europe and Asia. This unique setting has shaped the city’ s history.
THE WORLD IN BRUSH & PEN
Nostalgia, East Meets West Historic Istanbul, Turkey, 2022
Watercolour on canvas, 88 x 131 cm
Hiroshi Shimazaki
Divided by the Bosporus Strait, Istanbul straddles two continents— Europe and Asia. This unique setting has shaped the city’ s history.
The capital of three successive empires— Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman— today the city is a major commercial and cultural hub as well as a centre of integrated medical practice. Here, I have painted a bygone café scene on the Asian side against what the European waterfront might have looked like. This scene, a nostalgic synthesis, exists only in my mind— a poetic metaphor on the theme“ East Meets West.”
ARTA member Hiroshi Shimazaki is a geographer / artist who has been practising watercolour landscape sketching and painting for sixty years. Here he offers one window into an artist’ s mind.
SPRING 2026 | 11