As of January, 2014 Habib Gerez Art House is an extension of the Quincentennial Foundation Museum of Turkish Jews.
The works of poet and painter J. Habib Gerez are on exhibit there. Since the artist still lives at this location, only certain areas of the house are open to be visited.
Habib Gerez was born in 1926 in Ortaköy, Istanbul. He has had 142 personal exhibits of his works, 33 of them being overseas. He has won 63 awards from contests he has entered in the painting and poetry branches.
His works are on display at the Arsonval Museum and Troyes Museum of Fine Arts in France, the Herstal Museum in Belgium, the Judah Magnes Museum in U.S., Jewish Art and Ben-Ari museums in Israel, and at Selçuk Yaşar Museum and the Edirne Museum of Modern Art in Turkey.
Possessing the distinction of being an ‘Academic’, he is the honorary member of six academies overseas and the Turkish representative of European Academy, affiliated with The European Council.
In a ceremony held in Italy on June 28, 1998, he received the ‘European Grand Prize’ by the Academy, awarded to only one person each year, for his more than 50 years of contribution to the arts.
He has had 13 books of poetry published and a portion of his poems have been translated to foreign languages. Some of the over six hundred articles he has had published in various newspapers and magazines have appeared in the books titled ‘Dialogue with the Wind’ and ‘Art: The Taste of Life’. He has authored close to fifty books in print.
