An unusual festival featuring cinema, performance art, video installations, live music shows and contemporary dance kicked off at downtown Bios yesterday. What brings all the different artistic genres together? A look at the role of the sexes and people’s identity.

The series of events comes as an initiative of the Goethe Institutes based in Southeastern Europe, the cultural centers are currently approaching the issue of gender, participating in a contemporary and global discussion on the socially predetermined, fabricated and stereotyped roles of the sexes.

Many are already acquainted with so-called gender studies, in the last few decades alone, they have made their presence increasingly felt in university programs around the world. Perhaps those familiar with these developments on the academic front will have a clearer picture of what lies ahead at Bios this week.

They may have also heard of Judith Butler, the American writer and professor at California’s Berkeley, author of “Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.” Published in 1990, the book examined the notion of sex as a role. A feminist, Butler put forward the idea that a person’s sex identity has to do with specific moments and actions, she called it gender performativity. Difficult ideas to deal with back then, and not much has changed.

Don’t worry about the academic aspect however when it comes to the Bios events this week. The festival kicked off with a screening of Athanasios Karanikolas’s “S” and continues with short films shot by Jan Kruger between 2000 and 2007, along with a collection of films by Ula Stokl and Edgar Reitz from 1970.

Besides cinema, Genderpop, the three-day program starts in the Bios foyer on Friday, featuring art and music videos, performances, concerts and DJ sets. Among the guests is Berliner Joy Gutthardt, an actress whose performances explore the stereotypes of the female gender, Berlin singer Namosh, as well as female trio Rhythm King & Her Friends. All in all an intriguing group of artists taking over the downtown space this week.

Bios Venue, 84 Pireos Street, Athens.

Related Links >  www.goethe/de/athen

Art Athina, the capital’s contemporary art fair, attracts the local public as well as a number of international collectors. This year’s event will be held at the Helexpo grounds and will be even more extensive than last year’s event.

  Art Athina, the city’s contemporary art fair that is scheduled to open May 22, is one of the most happening and international events on the city’s contemporary art scene. At an informal meeting with members of the press, Art Athina’s Artistic Director Christos Savvidis and General Director Michalis Argyrou [essentially the event’s organizers], presented the main sections of the event, spoke with enthusiasm of their expectations of it and stressed the fact that this Athens art fair is gradually becoming a recognizable, international event with a growing, sound reputation.

The Hellenic Art Galleries Association has been the event’s organizing institution from the start. Savvidis and Argyrou are in charge of the Art Athina fair for the second consecutive year. Last year, the change of hands from the previous organizers to the current ones was one of the reasons that caused confusion and dissent. As a result, several Greek galleries refused to participate. However, last year’s success seems to have changed the negative attitude, bringing most of the dissenting galleries back to the event.

According to the organizers, another accomplishment is the fact that some of the most important, cutting-edge international galleries which participated in Art Athina for the first time last year have shown a willingness to participate at this year’s event as well: Peres projects from Germany, Monitor from Italy, Christian Nagel Gallery from Germany, and the Maag Gallery from Switzerland are among them.

Does that mean that Athens is coming to the attention of the international art market? According to Savvidis, Art Athina not only attracts Greek buyers but many international art collectors as well. To a certain extent, this is due to the work that has been put into the so-called VIP program, which aims at luring international buyers to the Athens art fair by organizing special events. Savvidis also noted that recent art events, such as the two contemporary art biennials held last year in Athens and Thessaloniki, have helped create a buzz around the contemporary art scene in Greece. He also said that the fact that Art Athina is relatively small in scale when compared to the big European art events means that it can retain a more homogenized and focused personality, something which adds to its attraction.

Held at the Helexpo building, as in previous years, the 2008 Art Athina will be based on the same idea as last year’s event: “Basic Plan”, the main exhibition hall, will include 45 booths by Greek and international galleries. Isabella Bortolozzi will curate an independent section. Presented on a different floor, “Open Plan” is a separate, large display in which the art shown and the galleries represented are selected by a specific art curator. For this year, the curator is Bettina Busse, who works with the Vienna Museum of Modern Art.

Sarah Belden who works with Curators without Borders – a platform for independent art curators based in Berlin – has prepared “Focus: Berlin-New York, First We Take Manhattan Then We Take Berlin”, a curatorial project that compares the contemporary art scenes of Berlin and New York City.

Art Athina also hosts a range of parallel projects, exhibitions that show the different facets of contemporary art. In the basement of the Helexpo building, Marina Fokidi has curated “The Garage Project”, an exhibition on the local contemporary art scene. Intended as a cool and hip exhibition, it encourages interaction and creates a relaxed, playful environment. Video art projections, for example, are designed in a way that resembles a summer, open-air cinema.

Also part of the “Parallel Projects” section of Art Athina is “Lion under the Rainbow: Art from Tehran”, an exhibition on contemporary Iranian art which is curated by artist Alexandros Georgiou and produced by D.ART. The exhibition will be held in a building in the city center [at 48-50 Aeolou Street, Athens].

“Elements of Light” curated by Boris Manner, professor at Vienna’s University of Applied Arts, is an exhibition that presents the works that the Russian artist Eugenia Emets and Austrian artist Markus Proschek produced during a residency on the island of Syros. The exhibition, held at the Hellenic American Union, is organized by the University of Applied Arts in collaboration with the Stella Art Foundation. Based on a Russian private art collection, this foundation is in the process of opening a Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow. Savvidis has said that the Museum will be directed by Robert Storr, director of the Venice Biennale in 2007 and a former dean of the Yale School of Art. The foundation has acquired several works from Art Athina. Savvidis said that the new Museum will include a section on contemporary Greek art.

Also part of the parallel project events will be an exhibition that will present works from the Costakis Collection of early-20th-century Russian Avant-Garde. The State Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki, which owns the collection together with the Museum of Cycladic Art which will host the exhibition, are the organizers.

During the three-days of Art Athina, there will also be round-table discussions, art presentations and lectures by artists, collectors, gallerists and international curators. Independent curators Catherine David and Christian Viveros-Faune are among the participants.

By building an international network, Art Athina hopes to gradually give more exposure to Greek artists but to also offer the Greek public a more rounded view of the international art scene. Organizers seem confident that this is already well under way.

Art Athina 2008 will open on May 23 at the Helexpo Palace, 39 Kifissias Avenue, Maroussi, Athens and will be open to May 25.

Related Links > www.art-athina.gr

Different kinds of art, including painting, street art, photography, installations and video screenings, will take over the block surrounded by Arachovis, Themistocleous, Coletti and Zoodochou Pigis Streets, as the second “Wo + Man =?” festival kicks off tonight.

Organized by the Open Horizons organization as part of the 6th Art Festival for Human Rights, this year’s event will explore sexuality, gender and identity issues. With the focus being on street art, 40 artists will redefine the use of public space as a venue for communicating with the public, by selecting outdoor and indoor spaces of bars, restaurants, cafes and other stores to exhibit their work. By exploring the possibilities that public and private venues can offer, they are hoping to send out a message about art and society. The aim is to create a bridge of communication with visitors and passers-by and trigger dialogue and a collective conscience.

  The festival’s central venue will be the Cosmos of Culture Center on the corner of Andrea Metaxa and Emmanouil Benaki Streets. That is where the official opening will take place, at 7 p. m. today and where information regarding all of the scheduled events will be available. Cosmos of Culture will also host all the video screenings.

Participating artists include Alexandros Avranas, Artemis Alkalai, Alma Bakiaj, Margarita Gelada, Giorgos Gyparakis, Antigone Kavvatha, Anna Laskari, Caroline May, Costas Beveratos, Giorgos Tserionis, Dorota Zglobicka, Ioanna Ximeri, Vangelis Raftogiannis and many others. The event was conceived and curated by Costas Theonas.

The festival will run until Sunday, April 5 and will be open daily 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. Admission to all venues is free. For further information call 210 3303385 or 210 8846038.

Related Links > www.humanrights.gr and www.cosmosofculture.gr

  An image from the video ‘Disappearance of a Tribe’ by Deimantas Narkevicius. 

  A photograph from Despina Meimaroglou’s project inspired by her trip to Cambodia.

During a trip to Cambodia three years ago, artist Despina Meimaroglou visited the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in the capital Phnom Penh. Originally a school, it had been converted into a torture site during Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime before much later becoming a Museum.

Impressed by the numbers of young students waiting to visit the former torture chambers, Meimaroglou began thinking about rememberance and the strong effect that certain historical events can have on our lives. Her visit to Cambodia provided one more occasion to ponder on politics and history, steady subject matter in the work of this politically oriented artist. Upon her return, and still deeply stressed by the strong effect that the visit to the Genocide Museum had on her, Meimaroglou began work on a new project.

“Discovering the Other – Tuol Sleng, After all who Rewrites History after You” the title of the art installation that ensued after the artist’s visit to Cambodia, is one of the artist’s two works presented in “Genius Seculi”, a joint exhibition on the work of Meimaroglou and the well-known Lithuanian artist Deimantas Narkevicius, who represented his country at the 2001 Venice Biennale. The exhibition is organized by the Center of Contemporary Art, a section of the Thessaloniki State Museum of Contemporary Art (SMCA) and curated by Syrago Tsiara, the Center’s Director.

Meimaroglou and Narkevicius both share an interest in exploring issues related to history and politics through personal narratives. They both view history through subjective, individual stories and explore the interplay between the personal and the collective.

Narkevicius raises issues related to his country’s recent history and uses film and video in the style of a documentary. “Once in the XX Century”, a film presented in the Thessaloniki exhibit, is a montage of footage documenting the tearing down of public sculpture during the period of the early 1990s when Soviet control of Lithuania came to an end. The overpowering presence of the sculpture is a metaphor for the staying effects of the Soviet regime. According to the artist, it suggests that the immediate changes that everybody hoped for were not effected, that the “utopia of liberalism, which then seemed the only way” did not become a reality.

The work of Narkevicius speaks of the importance of thinking about recent history in a critical and profound way. His work suggests that being oblivious to historical events is at the expense of awareness of both history and oneself.

In the video “Dissapearance of a Tribe”, Narkevicius reflects on the history of his country from the 1950s to today through a selection of images taken from his family photo album. Again, his work examines the ways in which the large events of history trickle down into the lives of people or how personal stories reflect broader, historical events.

This quest is also to be found in the work of Meimaroglou. In the video installation “Annette McGavigan: A Personal Story becomes History” Meimaroglou tells the story of a 15-year-old girl who was killed by British soldiers during the traumatic Bloody Sunday events in Northern Ireland in 1972. After a chance meeting with the victim’s brother in Athens a few years ago, Meimaroglou began collecting all sorts of archival material on this relatively recent chapter of Northern Ireland’s history.

Her work engages the notion of historical memory. The artist pays tribute to the anonymous victims of violence and tragic historical events. Both her work and the work of Narkevicius are a reminder that history is a living experience that shapes the present and our self-understanding.

“Genius Seculi” at the SMCA, Thessaloniki, to 30 April. For information call 2310 546683.

Related Links > www.cact.gr

http://www.greekstatemuseum.com

http://www.emst.gr

Kozalides visited Ordu as well as other regions of Turkey but also traveled to Georgia, Ukraine and Russia. The photographs he produced, on a commission from the Benaki Museum, are exhibited in "Pavlos Kozalides: Seeking a Lost Homeland", an exhibition curated by the artist and on display at the main building of the Benaki Museum, while the Museum’s Photographic Archives is the organizer.

Kozalides seeks out those aspects of Greek tradition that still survive in the communities of Greeks living in the Black Sea and draws attention to an important but somewhat neglected part of the Greek diaspora.

Born in Piraeus in 1961, Kozalides moved with his family to Canada when he was 7. He started working as a photographer in the 1980s, upon his permanant return to Greece. He has traveled extensively, photographing different parts of the world. The Benaki exhibition is the first public presentation of his work.

"Pavlos Kozalides: Seeking a Lost Homeland", Benaki Museum, 1 Koumbari Street, Athens, tel 210 3671000. To April 13.

Related Links > www.benaki.gr

An exhibition of photographs by Katerina Aidoni titled "A View of Ileia, Before and After", that is, before and after last summer’s forest fires – opened at the Gaia Center last night to mark World Forestry Day celebrated on March 21.

The exhibition was launched last night by Niki Goulandris, head of the Goulandris Natural History Museum and its board. The photograph featured here shows the Hill of Cronus, Ancient Olympia, as it is now. The fires that engulfed the prefecture of Ileia threatened the Olympic flame-lighting ceremony but fortunately the gods of Olympus intervened and saved the site.

The Gaia Center, 100 Othonos Street, Kifissia, Athens.

Related Links > http://www.gnhm.gr/MuseumSelect.aspx?lang=en-US

With natural exhibits and interactive applications of advanced technology, the exhibition brings to life the social, political and intellectual reality of the city of Athens in the period in which the Agora was constructed.

Related Links > http://meeting.athens-agora.gr/index_en.html

http://www.fhw.gr/fhw/index.php?lg=2#

  "The Straw Hat" painted 1923-1926 (86 x 66 cm). From the National Gallery collection.

One of the most important advocates of modern art in Greece, Nikolaos Lytras (1883-1927) is one of only a handful of artists who radically distanced themselves from academic art and helped establish modernism for future painters. "Nikos Lytras: Building with Color and Light", a large exhibition which opens Wednesday evening at the National Gallery running through June 2 and is curated by Aphrodite Kouria, unfolds the innovative vision of this distinctive artist through a broad selection of his portraits, landscapes and still lifes.

His father, Nikiforos Lytras, was one of the most renowned painters of the late 19th century “School of Munich” generation of painters who had studied at the Academy of Munich and were trained in academic art. Nikos Lytras studied at the Academy of Munich as well but, like other artists of his generation, quickly tuned into the modern movements of the time. As the curator argues in her essay, by the time Lytras had concluded his studies in 1911, early 20th-century German expressionism, as represented by the Die Brucke group, was well under way and the Blue Rider movement was just being founded by Vassili Kandinsky. Although there is no direct link between those developments and the work of Lytras, it seems that the artist did use certain elements of expressionism, as seen for example in the broad brushstrokes of his landscapes and the use of heavy impasto, in his work, combining them with other influences ranging from post-impressionism to fauvism. The use of color in his work is also quite modern. As the curator notes, Lytras usually places cool colors in the foreground and warm colors in the background, an effect that diminishes depth and accentuates flatness, a key element of modern art.

Lytras also modernized portraiture. His contemporary Yiannis Bouzianis was probably the greatest master in the genre. Throughout his short life, Lytras was assailed by the conservative critics of his time but was also recognized as an innovative artist. In 1923, he became a professor at the School of Fine Arts, being preferred to the eminent and slightly older Constantinos Parthenis, also a candidate for the post.

Lytras was also a founding member, in 1917, of the Omada Technis, a group which brought together some of the most innovative artists of the time, including Parthenis, Pericles Vyzantios and Constantinos Maleas. The exhibition shows the full range of Lytras’s work and underlines his contribution to the development of modern art in this country.

National Gallery, 44 Vasileos Constantinou Avenue, Ilisia, Athens, tel 210 7235937 and 210 7235937 - 8.

Related Links > http://www.nationalgallery.gr

Curated by Ghislaine Dantan and Eleni Koukou and initiated by Yiannis Houvardas, director of the National Theater, the project invites visual artists to make works that address issues related to performance. The works have been placed in the foyer of the theater, the first part took place in the vestibule of the Rex Theater, part of the project’s challenge is to make contemporary art relevant to both a visual arts public and adherents of theater.

  Installation view by artist Dimitra Vamiali

The newly inaugurated second part includes an installation by Dimitra Vamiali and a performance by Giorgos Sapountzis. Vamiali, who will also participate in the upcoming third and final part of Common View at the end of the month, has taken excerpts from the scripts of the plays performed this season by the National Theater and presented them in the form of panels that resemble old-fashioned commercial signage.

Giorgos Sapountzis, who has made several public performances aimed at sensitizing us to urban sites, will be showing a three-hour, audience-interactive performance scheduled for Friday night at the Pedion tou Areos. His performance makes reference to Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” which opens at the Kappa Theater on the same day. For participation, the general public should contact > commonview@n-t.gr.

Dimitra Vamiali’s installation is being shown at the National Theater’s New Stage, 41 Evmolpidon Street, Gazi, Athens. The installation is open during the theater’s hours of operation. Videos documenting four different performances by Giorgos Sapountzis are also presented alongside.

Related Links > www.n-t.gr

Singer Maria Farandouri, joined by Zacharias Karounis and accompanied by an eight-piece orchestra, will sing at the Athens Concert Hall on Thursday, while actors Eva Kotamanidou and Nikos Bousdoukos will read excerpts at an evening of Greek political poetry set to music. International Poetry Day falls this Friday, March 21, but the celebrations start today.

Stoa tou Vivliou [Books Arcade] and PoeticaNet have put together a lively mix of discussion, poetry set to music and a video, curated by poet Iosif Ventouras. First up are Professors Dimitris Dimiroulos and Elisavet Arseniou, exploring the subject of poetry in the information age. Then the hip-hop group Enemy will present songs from their latest album and collide with living poems. Participants include poet and media artist Dimosthenis Agrafiotis and American poet Heather Raikes, who will talk about her work in a video made for the event. That’s at 8 p.m. today, at the Stoa tou Vivliou, 5 Pesmazoglou Street, Athens, tel 210 3253989.

The European Translation Center (EKEMEL), Ikaros Publishers and Patakis bookstore are saluting International Poetry Day with a presentation of Alexandros Issaris’s book “Kato apo tosa vlefara: Simeioseis gia ton Rilke” (Under So Many Eyelids: Notes on Rilke), published last year by Ikaros. The speakers are literary critic Vangelis Hatzivassileiou, writer Yiannis Efstathiadis and the author, who is also a poet and translator. Actress Mayia Lyberopoulou will read extracts from the book. Tomorrow, Patakis bookstore, 65 Academias Street, Athens, tel 210 3811850, at 7 p.m.

Poems will liven up time spent at bus and tram stops and metro stations and on board public transport as of Wednesday and until April 22. It’s the latest edition of a successful promotion by the National Book Center of Greece (EKEBI). Poet and academic Nasos Vagenas chose the poems and six young students and graduates of the Athens School of Fine Arts produced the colorful posters.

Verses by Nobel laureate Odysseas Elytis feature on a phone card to be issued on International Poetry Day. In a follow-up to another campaign by EKEBI and telecoms provider OTE, there will be a new phone card with different verses every month till December. This year’s selections will be from political poems.

Greek political poetry set to music is the theme of an evening at the Athens Concert Hall on Thursday. Maria Farandouri and Zacharias Karounis, accompanied by an eight-piece orchestra, will sing, and actors Eva Kotamanidou and Nikos Bousdoukos will read. Giorgos Papadakis has selected and orchestrated excerpts from Euripides, as well as pieces by Yiannis Ritsos, Odysseas Elytis, Nikos Gatsos and Iakovos Kambanellis and others, with music by composers such Eleni Karaindrou, Manos Hadjidakis, Mikis Theodorakis and Thanos Mikroutsikos. Vassilis Nikolaidis will conduct.

Poet Nikiforos Vrettakos is the subject of a tribute starting 5.30 p.m. at the Benaki Museum on International Poetry Day. Academics Eratosthennis Kapsomenou, Vincenzo Rotolo, Vangelis Athanassopoulos, poet Titos Patrikios and Vrettakos Archive director Eleni Tzinieri-Tzanetakou will speak, followed by the first public screening of Athanasia Drakopoulou’s film “Periousaka Stihiea” at 8.30 p.m. at the Benaki Museum Pireos Annex, 138 Pireos Street and Andronikou Street, Athens, tel 210 3453111.

An exhibition of first editions, and documents for the Nikiforos Vrettakos Archive opens Friday and runs to April 20 at the main branch of the Benaki Museum, 1 Koumbari Street, Kolonaki, Athens, tel 210 3671000.

  A view of Salamina is seen in this 1926 painting (left). Part of the Pantocrator monastery complex on Mount Athos [1935] (right).

After a visit to Greece during the mid-1950s, Albert Camus wrote of how impressed he was with the Greek light. “For me, Greece is a big, bright day,” he noted. Camus was not the only intellectual to have remarked on the distinctive quality of sunlight in Greece. Especially during the summer months, the brightness renders colors pale and makes shapes lose their weight and volume.

Spyros Papaloukas (1892-1957) was an artist captivated by that effect. Throughout his remarkable work, he explored color and light in the Greek landscape. The wonderful, large exhibition on his work which opened a couple of months ago at the Vassilis and Marina Theocharakis Foundation for the Visual Arts and Music, shows the profound understanding that Papaloukas had for the Greek landscape, his favorite subject. The exhibition is curated by Takis Mavrotas and includes works that Mina Papalouka, the daughter of the artist, had donated to the Foundation which now owns the greatest number of the artist’s oeuvre.

The work of Spyros Papaloukas is usually classified according to the places he visited and the landscapes he painted. It begins with small paintings of Aegina and ends with the paintings of Hydra from the mid-1950s. Landscapes from Mount Athos, where Papaloukas spent a year in 1923, are followed by views of Mytilene and Salamina. There are also the paintings of Paros from 1948, a distinctive entity singled out for the wonderful use of cobalt blue painted in broad, horizontal, sweeping lines across the canvas. In these works abstraction, which Papaloukas explored throughout his work, reaches its fullest expression. “Landscape is the genre that allows me to define and appraise all the potential of painting...” he wrote. Besides the landscapes, portraits and still lifes make up another important part of his work.

For Papaloukas the Greek landscape was unique. “The vision of the Greek landscape develops simply, calmly and clearly, in a way that is not encountered either in the East or the West,” he wrote. He studied its lines and shapes, not with the intention of producing naturalistic representations but of capturing its essence. A true modernist, he believed that what matters in painting is its own properties rather than the subject. “Painting means color... It should move one by its own materials not by its subject matter,” he wrote.

In many ways, this belief reflects the influence that the work of the French, late-19th-century Nabis painters had on his work. In his famous pronouncement on art, Maurice Denis, a member of the group, had written, “Remember that a picture – before being a war horse or a nude woman or an anecdote – is essentially a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order.”

Papaloukas shared this emphasis on the intrinsic language of painting. His work carries the influence of the Nabis especially in the use of color and flat patterning but also bears the imprint of post-impressionism, particularly Cezanne and his exploration of structure.

Papaloukas must have scrutinized those works during the three years from 1917-1921 that he spent in Paris studying at the art academies of the Grande Chaumiere and the Ecole Julian. This was when the Dada movement was already well under way. But it was also a time when painters were turning to more classical, traditional norms, the period of the so-called “return to order” movement in art.

Papaloukas would soon turn to his own cultural roots. Like the painters of the so-called Thirties Generation that followed (Yiannis Moralis, Nikos-Hadjikyriakos Ghikas and Spyros Vassiliou among them), he would delve into Greek tradition and combine certain of its aspects with the precepts of modern painting. Together with his close friend Fotis Kontoglou, he anticipated the so-called search for “Greekness” in painting. Kontoglou remained much more rooted in tradition.

For Papaloukas the connection was with Byzantine tradition. He left Paris to join the Asia Minor campaign as a war artist. In 1923, devastated by the great disaster that had ensued, he withdrew for a year – after his stay in Aegina and together with his friend Stratis Doukas – to Mount Athos. He produced studies of Byzantine art and painted rhythmic compositions of the surrounding nature and the architecture of the monasteries. Papaloukas believed that an understanding of the Byzantine tradition was vital for the quests of a modern artist. “Whoever does not understand aesthetically the Byzantine period cannot wholly comprehend the ancient Greek period. And, when an artist does not understand the Greek past, it is impossible to create the Greek future” he wrote. Papaloukas believed that the issues pertaining to painting remained unchanged through time. He did not make any clear-cut divisions between the art of the past and the present, yet he also believed that an artist should always strive to express modern times.

Yannis Tsarouchis once said that the “rediscovery” of Byzantium by artists such as Konstantinos Parthenis, Fotis Kontoglou and Spyros Papaloukas had helped the artists of his generation to better comprehend impressionism, post-impressionism and European art.

Utterly modern and innovative, the art of Papaloukas, his beautiful landscapes from all over Greece, are based on a solid understanding of both Greek and European art, of tradition and modernism. They are a masterful, modern exercise in color and light and an eloquent expression of the Greek landscape.

Spyros Papaloukas Exhibition > The Vassilis and Marina Theocharakis Foundation for the Visual Arts and Music, 9 Vasilissis Sofias Avenue and 1 Merlin Street, Athens, tel 210 3611206, exhibition runs to April 20th.

Related Links > www.thf.gr

  Another one of the hearts, by Angeliki Makri.

The open-air artwork displayed in “Hearts in Athens” ought to feel very lonely, as opposed to the cows [the Cow Parade] who took over the city for months and turned into stars and mascots. The cows were cute, tender, elegant, flirtatious and coquettish. Everybody wanted a photo with them, everybody stopped to take a look.

The hearts, however, make the city look like a department store window ahead of Valentine’s Day, they seem heartless, distant and indifferent. Few Athenians stop to take a good look, choosing instead to walk past them. It’s not the artists’ fault, the majority of whom are of the new generation, who have tried to incorporate their worries, sensibilities, imagination and city images into the shape of the heart. Perhaps that’s precisely where the problem lies, the heart’s actual shape, which is overused and identified with too many things, ranging from Latin American soap operas and Mills & Boon romances to chocolates and cholesterol advertisements.

Public art through open-air exhibitions, which first appeared in Athens last year, with a preview during the Athens 2004 Olympics, is a good idea, familiarizing citizens with the visual arts. In a city where visual public culture is identified with busts and sculptures, the familiarization of citizens with contemporary art could very well act as a well-received, “free” education.

  While the cows stopped in Athens as part of a European capitals tour, the hearts begin their road trip from the Greek capital.

The open-air exhibition began on January 21, when key city-center spots filled with over 70 flat or three-dimensional hearts: Kolonaki Square, Syntagma Square, Korai Street, Arsakeio Hall, Panepistimiou Street and Vassilissis Sofias Avenue, to name but a few. Whether hanging from walls or flat surfaces, or installed on pedestrian streets, squares and sidewalks, the works are scheduled to stay put until March 19. A charity auction will then take place on a farewell evening organized for April 14, with 50 percent of the proceeds aiding the charity Together for Children.

Related Links > http://www.heartsinathens.gr

  Schools were initially banned from visiting the exhibition of Picasso's 'Suite 347' prints at the city's Telloglio Arts Centre this week. But the decision was rescinded when an education inspector found that the offending prints were not being shown to schoolchildren visiting the exhibition.

"The works in question have been deemed unsuitable for pupils," local secondary education director Theodoulos Tapanidis said. "We had to examine the issue after complaints arose," he said. "The prints in question are in a separate area and were never part of the school tour anyway," a centre employee said.

  A series of 347 engravings on topics including the female nude, bullfighting and flamenco, 'Suite 347' was created by Picasso in 1968 at the age of 87.

Modern art often causes controversy in Greece where a large segment of the population is sensitive to issues involving the Greek National Anthem, the Greek flag and Orthodox Christian religion.

In 2003, a Belgian artist's painting featuring a penis facing a cross was removed from a state-funded exhibition in Athens after the Church and conservative lawmakers complained. Last year, the director of another state-funded Athens art show was arrested on charges of obscenity and an attack on national symbols over a video display in which a woman masturbated to the Greek National Anthem. He was later acquitted in court.

Related Links > http://www.tf.auth.gr/teloglion/

http://www.tf.auth.gr/teloglion/default.aspx?lang=en-US&page=448

  Zoe Glavani: A woman having her hair combed (1952, woodcut).

To mark this year’s celebration of International Women’s Day on March 8, art collector Nikos Grigorakis has curated an exhibition dedicated to Greek women artists and engravers with 40 rare works which opens next Monday, March 17, at the Grigorakis Museum and Art Gallery.

Grigorakis said he wanted to pay tribute to Greek women artists in two phases. The first is for artists born in the first two decades of the 20th century and who are no longer alive: Vasso Katraki, Fofo Kachrimani, Anna Kindyni, Sofia Laskaridou, Koula Bekiari, Ira Economidi and Celeste Polychroniadi. This group also includes the younger artists Zizi Makri and Zoe Glavani. The second group are mostly students of Costas Grammatopoulos, such as Aria Komianou, Julia Lakeridou, Jenny Markaki, Eleni Economidi, Liana Papaioannou, Rubina Sarelakou and the youngest of all, Maria Papadimitriou (Goritsa), born in 1967. The tribute concludes with a series of rare drawings by the Corfiot artist Maria Desylla. The exhibition ends on May 10.

Grigorakis Museum and Art Gallery, 4 Iakinthon Street, Palaio Psychico, Athens, tel 210 6740806.

  Bull’s Head Rhyton. A spectacular vessel dating to the Late Minoan IB period (ca 1450 BC), Iraklion Archaeological Museum. More than 300 artifacts reflecting the high level of creativity of the Minoan civilization will be exhibited at the Onassis Cultural Center in New York.

A full depiction of the glory of Minoan Crete is set to travel outside Greece for the first time. In collaboration with the Ministry of Culture and archaeological museums on the island, the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation is preparing to launch the “From the Land of the Labyrinth: Minoan Crete, 3000-1100 BC” exhibition at its New York-based affiliate, the Onassis Cultural Center. The exhibition, which will run March 13 to September 13, will reveal different aspects of the daily life of the so-called Minoan civilization, which derives its name from the legendary Cretan King Minos.

Onassis Foundation President Antonis Papadimitriou pointed out the importance of Minoan civilization, as Europe’s first fully developed culture, at yesterday’s press conference. “We decided to do something more edgy,” he explained, because lately the foundation’s New York exhibitions have dealt with more “mainstream” themes, such as the Athens-Sparta conflict and Alexander the Great.

“We should not forget that Crete had unfortified cities, something which we only encounter later in Europe after the 19th century,” said Papadimitriou. “At a time like today, when civilizations, religions and races get all the more intertwined, it is important to remember what it is that connects us.”

Minoan civilization is the name given to the culture that developed in Crete between 3000 and 1100 BC and which is divided into different periods (Prepalatial, Protopalatial, Neopalatial and Postpalatial). Favored by its privileged geographical position, Crete developed an extensive network of trade routes. The blossoming of trade in the first period and the ensuing wealth resulted in a well-structured palatial society, with the palaces becoming the centers of economic, religious and social life. Two types of scripts, a hieroglyphic script and Linear A, were used to facilitate economic activities.

Maria Andreadaki-Vlazaki, head of the 25th Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities and director of the Hania and Rethymnon archaeological museums as well as one of the exhibition curators, said the display covers all Minoan periods. It is divided into 11 thematic and chronological sections. Highlights include the “Religion and Ritual” section, which features sacred Minoan symbols (such as the Bull’s Head Rhyton), the murals section but also “Scripts and Weights” which includes Linear B tablets, clear proof of a Mycenaean presence in Crete in the final period. “Pots and Potters” features some skillfully made vases, while “Masterpieces in Stone” demonstrates a variety of stone artifacts. There are sections devoted to tools used in workshops, weaponry and cooking. Elaborate seals, jewelry and sarcophagi will also be on display.

An international day conference as well as lectures have been scheduled to take place in the context of the exhibition, which will be accompanied by a catalog and a DVD.

The Foundation has also launched a series of dramatized readings of ancient Greek texts. The first rhapsody of Homer’s “Iliad” was successfully performed at the steps of the Altar at Berlin’s Pergamon Museum recently. The next reading will re-enact ancient historian Thucydides’ famous “Melian Dialogue”, the debate between the Athenians and the residents of Melos which failed to deter the former from their hard stance. It will be held in Washington in the near future before traveling on to other US cities.

Onassis Cultural Center, Olympic Tower, 645 Fifth Avenue, New York City, USA.

Related Links > www.onassis.gr

The word “nostos” occupies a distinctive place in the Greek collective unconscious. Encountered in Homer to denote Odysseus’ return home, it is a word about man’s connection to his roots, family and cultural heritage, the yearning for a place that remains unchanged. Nostos and “algos” which means pain in Ancient Greek, have borne nostalgia, a feeling that prevailed in the lives of generations of Greek immigrants. Nostos is the return after a long absence to a place or to people the memory of which may no longer correspond to reality. Beautifully written about in Giorgos Seferis’s poem “The Return of the Exile” nostos involves self-fulfillment but is also subject to risks and disillusionment. It is about change, loss and the powerful feeling of belonging.

In “Nostos”, a large exhibition on the work of the distinguished Greek artist Yiannis Psychopedis which opens today at the Museum of Cycladic Art and is curated by Takis Mavrotas, one will strongly sense this feeling of a return, a journey back to Greece’s cultural heritage, antiquity, history and memory. It is neither a romanticized nor a “nationalistic” return, but a “return” that aims at self-knowledge. It is about cultivating a deeper understanding of Greece’s cultural heritage and obtaining a critical appraisal of the present, a “critical nostalgia” in the words of the artist.

The 100 works on display date from the late 1970s to the present and include the most important projects by the artist, who is also a professor at the Athens School of Fine Arts. Visually, the works share a more or less similar language. Both his paintings and mixed technique works look like visual diaries, a collage of different images put together to produce contrasts and connections. References to ancient Greece prevail: There are images of the Parthenon and the ancient site of Delphi in the series “Columns and Pillars” or “Oracle”. There is an entire series inspired by Homer’s “Odyssey” and another on the ancient philosopher Parmenides.

  "The Letter that Never Arrived" (1985) 35X48. Psychopedis usually works on a particular theme for several years. Among the most well-known series is “The Letter that Never Arrived” which began in 1977 and continues into the present. Postcards that are painted over, letters (the written word recurs in the work of Psychopedis), envelopes, maps as well as motifs from the ancient Greek civilization are combined in visually and conceptually dense works which communicate the feeling of a journey that never reaches its destination. There is an autobiographical aspect to this work. Psychopedis had been living in Germany since 1970 (he remained there until 1987, then moved on to Brussels and settled in Greece in 1992) and it is perhaps his life as an expatriate Greek that set him on this mental journey back home, to his cultural heritage.

In another series, known as “A Lesson in Greek History, Art, Society, Politics” (1964-2004), references to Greece’s ancient past are paired with images taken from demonstrations or crucial political events in the history of this country. The political content that is found in all of the artist’s work is particularly strong in these images.

There is also an underlying sense of entrapment, urgency and the threat of destruction. The work of Psychopedis urges us to obtain a better understanding of who we are and what our history is. During the exhibition’s press conference, the artist spoke of last summer’s destructive fires. “A country that allows a disaster of this magnitude and could not protect Olympia from it should rethink its identity and its relationship with its cultural past,” he said. His work is a reminder of this responsibility. It is an incentive for thought on self-identity, history and the importance that an understanding of one’s cultural heritage has for a more fulfilling existence.

The exhibition on the work of Yiannis Psychopedis opened as planned, despite the recent death of Dolly Goulandris, founder of the Museum. This would have been the wish of Goulandris, who wanted the Museum to continue its work long after she passed away. Her niece and successor, Sandra Marinopoulou, formerly a member of the Museum’s Board, is now President of the N.P. Goulandris Foundation. Marinopoulou has been working closely with Dolly Goulandris for the past four years and intends to follow the same path and vision as its founder. As she said, Goulandris did not leave any strict guidelines but was firm on one thing: keeping up the profile of the archaeological museum and hosting parallel, non-archaeological exhibitions as side events. Scheduled for the upcoming months is the opening of two of the museum’s permanent collections. Also planned is an exhibition on the Russian avant-garde, an event organized in collaboration with the State Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki.

Yiannis Psychopedis “Nostos”, Museum of Cycladic Art, 4 Neophytou Douka Street, Athens, tel 210 7228321, to April 30.

Related Links > http://www.cycladic.gr

A selection of art exhibitions that are currently taking place at the galleries and museums in different parts of Athens indicates diversity and a broad range.

The solo exhibition of painter Eleni Theofyllaktou, currently at the a.antonopoulou.art gallery (20 Aristophanous Street, Athens, tel 210 3214994, http://www.aaart.gr) through March 15, is among the most interesting shows on view this month. Colored, pencil drawings in different sizes depict surreal-like images that usually feature a young girl or female figure. Birds, especially storks, are a recurring motif. The works contain humor and paradox. They indirectly speak of femininity and the passage from childhood to puberty and adolescence. The unusual arrangement of the works, some of them either placed high up or just above the floor, enhance the prevalent atmosphere of mystery and surrealism.

“Family Affairs” an exhibition on the work of Dimitris Tsoublekas presented at the Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center (48 Armatolon and Klefton Street, Athens, tel 210 6442852, http://www.art-tounta.gr) shows the turn that the work of the photographer has taken from urban scenes to more domestic, autobiographical themes. Tsoumplekas keeps to the surreal style typical of his work and evokes childhood memories. To March 29.

A separate, solo exhibition on the work of Dimitris Baboulis is also being held at the same gallery [see above]. Painted with precision and care for detail, the artist’s large ink drawings on rice paper allude to the age of technology and robotics.

An entirely different mood prevails in the work of the late Panos Feidakis, currently being shown at the Frissiras Museum (3 and 7 Monis Asteriou Street, Plaka, Athens, tel 210 3234678, http://www.frissirasmuseum.com) until March 9. Feidakis, who died at a young age, was part of the 80s generation of Greek figurative painters. The exhibition, which is a tribute to his work, contains 100 of his paintings, mostly portraits.

Another exhibition, in the “classical” mode of painting, is the solo show of Paris Prekas at the Fine Arts Kapopoulos gallery (62 Poseidonos Avenue, Alimos, Athens, tel 210 9835303, http://www.kapopoulosart.gr/index_en.html) through March 10. Prekas who is known for his paintings of ships and ports, presents watercolors, all landscapes of Crete.

Coming up this Sunday is a presentation of a selection of Maria Antelman’s videos at the War Museum (2 Rizari and Vasilissis Sophias Avenue, Kolonaki, Athens, tel 210 72 44464). An example of her work is “Voyage, A Comprehensive Questionnaire” a video that is made in the style of a documentary and which re-enacts the Battle of Monmouth that took place in June 1778 during the American Revolution. The exhibition is held in collaboration with The Apartment gallery which represents the New-York based artist Maria Antelman, and will be open every Friday from noon to 2 p.m. to March 21.

Also coming up this Monday is a large exhibition on the work of Yiannis Psychopedis at the Museum of Cycladic Art (4 Neophytou Douka Street, Athens, tel 210 7228321, http://www.cycladic-m.gr). Curated by Takis Mavrotas, the exhibition focuses on the references to ancient Greece in the work of this important Greek artist.

What is the relationship between composer Philip Glass and multifaceted artist Leonard Cohen? Both enjoy great popularity in Greece, Glass has performed here numerous times, while Cohen purchased a home on the island of Hydra quite some time ago.

Now the two are teaming up for a new project, a combination of theater, poetry and visual arts. The “Book of Longing” a performance based on poems, paintings and sketches by Cohen, will be staged at the Badminton Theater in Goudi from July 8 to 12. Self-portraits, landscapes and portraits of loved ones, mostly women, will be projected onto the background while Glass’s compositions fill the arena. The pensive and erotic “Book of Longing” brings to life 167 poems and 40 sketches that Cohen created over the past 20 years.

Glass selected 22 of these poems and produced a performance that blends instrumental compositions, solo interpretations, recitation and painting. Cohen’s recorded voice is heard reciting poems, telling his story and meditating, while Glass participates as a keyboardist, alongside a group of skilled musicians.

Badminton Theater, Goudi Military Park, Athens, tel 211 1086024. For tickets and information call 210 8840600 or visit >  www.ticketnet.gr

Related Links > http://www.badmintontheater.gr

Members of the Thessaloniki School for the Blind and the Panhellenic Association of the Blind recently enjoyed a guided tour of a new contemporary art exhibition.

Among the visitors was Ioanna, who made her way along Constantin Xenakis’s work, “Keimeno horis logo” (Text with no speach) She noted the artist’s “hieroglyphics,” described the work as rather “abstract” and was informed by the caption (in Braille) about the work’s dimension, title and technique.

The embossed work “read” by Ioanna was the tactile representation of the original work. Placed one next to the other, Xenakis’s original painting is being showcased as part of the Museum’s “Visual Arts Panorama in Greece 2”, an exhibition showcasing 100 works by 80 artists. A group of specialists (including social anthropologists, teachers and art restorers) joined forces with Thessaloniki State Museum of Contemporary Art and Thessaloniki School for the Blind volunteers in order to translate 21 of the works into a hands-on format.

“Not all of the works are appropriate for tactile translation,” said Maria Tsantsanoglou, the Museum’s Director. “We usually select works that can be rendered in an easy and comprehensive manner.”

The Thessaloniki Museum’s initiative is part of an international network of Museums carrying out the “Art Beyond Sight” program, including the Metropolitan Museum in New York and London’s Tate Modern and Victoria and Albert Museum.

Related Links > http://www.greekstatemuseum.com

In the first decades of the 20th century, the families of Kythera that wanted to have photographic portraits taken would most likely have gone to the studio of Panayiotis Fatseas, a self-taught photographer gifted with a talent for capturing his sitter’s gaze and personality in lively, non-academic portraits. The photographs that Fatseas took on this island off the eastern tip of the Peloponnese documented the most important moments in the lives of the local inhabitants: the weddings, formal events, the birth of a new child, both happiness and grief. His clients also included the families that had emigrated to either the United States or Australia; their request was to have photographs of their relatives, still back home, sent to them.

From 1920 until his untimely death in 1938 – he was only 50 – Fatseas produced a substantial body of work, only recently discovered and now appraised as an important chapter in the history of early Greek photography. This is thanks to Yiannis Stathatos, a photographer, curator and writer on photography (and the person behind the Kythera Photographic Encounters), the person who located and undertook the study and conservation of the Panayiotis Fatseas archive (around 2,200 glass negative plates) and brought it to the attention of both specialists and the general public.

A selection of Fatseas’s photographs were first presented during one of the Kythera Photographic Encounter events a few years ago. “Panayiotis Fatseas, Faces of Kythera, 1920-1938,” an exhibition that recently opened at the Pireos Annex of the Benaki Museum, now makes his work known to the Athenian public. The exhibition is organized by the Kythera Photographic Encounters and the Photography Archive of the Cultural Society of Kythera to which the Fatseas archive was donated in 2002 in collaboration with the Photographic Archives of the Benaki Museum. It is supplemented with a catalog on the artist’s work.

Stathatos, curator of the exhibition, notes that one of the unique aspects in the photography of Fatseas is its lack of rigidity, the ease and naturalness in the poses and the vividness in the expressions of the sitters. Fatseas did not photograph frozen postures or void expressions but had a rare capacity for bringing out the distinctive personality of each person. Portraiture comprises the majority of his work; however there were also some pictures of landscapes and outings.

Most of the photographs were taken in his studio, which was set up around 1920; the building is still preserved. It is most probable that Fatseas was the first inhabitant on Kythera to own a photographic camera. He had purchased it in New York where he emigrated to at the age of 23 and lived for two years, working as a waiter. He returned to Greece in 1912 in order to fight in the Balkan wars. The huge demand for portraits made him turn to photography, yet Fatseas also worked in agriculture and commerce for a short period.

Two of his sons took up the trade and ran their father’s photographic studio for another four decades after the photographer’s death. They also expanded its activities by incorporating a summer cinema. However, the archive of Fatseas remained hidden for years. Aided by Fatseas’s grandson, Stathatos has saved the archive from destruction and made a new valuable addition to the history of Greek photography.

“Panayiotis Fatseas, Faces of Kythera, 1920-1938” at the Pireos Annex of the Benaki Museum, 138 Pireos Street, Athens, tel 210 3453111. Through March 23.

  A new Public Art Event is currently on show in Athens.

Hearts in the World introduces a new Public Art Event, inaugurated with Hearts in Athens 2008, where painters, sculptors, graffiti artists, designers and other aspiring creators are welcome to participate and submit their Heart design (Pop, Graffiti, Abstract or Landscape art etc.).

Hearts in Athens is where Art abandons the closed spaces and is transported into the street, under the sky, without entry fees, without walls, without roofs.

More than 60 hearts, in large size, sponsored by the business community and painted or sculptured by established and upcoming artists but also eminent personalities of the city, will be exposed in pre-selected, busy parts of the city.

Multi-coloured, red, white, luminous, sculptured, romantic, in Love artistic hearts used as a big canvas or transformed into other shapes, will climb into the lamp posts, will swim into water fountains, will fill the streets and the squares of Athens.

We will admire them, we will love them and we will judge them.

We will touch them and they will touch us with their sensitivity and their messages.

Strolling by, we will fancy them, we will stop to take a picture of them, we will look for them throughout the city.

Related Links > http://www.heartsinathens.gr/index_en.html

Simon Spierer, an Italian-born art collector of Jewish descent, used to say that he could not imagine his life without art. In the beginning, that art was paintings, then sculpture. Spierer had built up a substantial collection of 20th-century painting but sold it in its entirety to focus on sculpture. His collection includes 40 works by some of the most classic, prominent names in the history of modern sculpture, among them are Jean Arp, Alberto Giacometti, Barbara Hepworth, Andre Masson, Isamu Noguchi, Henry Moore, Tony Cragg, Louise Bourgeois, Anthony Caro and Constantin Brancusi.

  Henry Moore’s ‘Three-Quarter Figure: Lines’ (82.5x31.5x25.5 cm), a bronze sculpture from 1980. Moore is one of the 40 prominent sculptors represented in the Simon Spierer collection. Among them there are also two Greek names: Takis and Yiannis Avramidis. 

A year before he died in 2005, Spierer donated his collection to the Hessisches Landesmuseum in Darmstadt, Germany. To make the collection better known internationally, the museum, which is temporarily closed due to restoration work, decided to organize (in collaboration with the Institute for Cultural Exchange in Tubingen) a touring exhibition. Athens is the first stop (to April 14). “A Forest of Sculptures, Collection Simon Spierer,” which opened yesterday at the Athinais Cultural Center and is curated by Takis Mavrotas, is an impressive display of classic, modern sculpture. The sculptures have been arranged close to one another to create the idea of a forest of sculptures: This was how Spierer wanted his collection to be shown and is how it is displayed at its home museum.

The show resembles more of a open-air installation, is more engaging than a conventional display and effective in giving the elegant, monumental sculptures an even livelier presence. Spierer’s portrait by Andy Warhol is the only painting.

It seems that Spierer had an inherently trained eye for art. Born in Italy, he fled at an early age to Switzerland to avoid the fascist persecutions (his mother and sister, who remained in Trieste, were taken to a concentration camp) and subsequently worked in the USA. Spierer made his fortune in the tobacco business and lived in Hamburg and Geneva. He began collecting art in the 1950s. In the 60s, he and his companion, Marie-Louise Jeanneret, opened an art gallery in Champel, close to Geneva. In Boissano, an area between Genoa and San Remo, Italy, they established a center for the arts, a workshop and residency that drew famous artists from all over the world. When Marie-Louise died in 1994, he closed the gallery. His decision to donate his collection to a museum was a long-held wish. Spierer was a man with an appreciation of and love for art. The touring exhibition that begins in Athens now makes his vision known worldwide.

Athinais Cultural Center, 34-36 Kastorias Street, Votanikos, Athens, tel 210 3480000.

  Thessaloniki’s landmark White Tower will once again become part of life in the northern port this year, after being closed for two years in preparation for an exhibition about the city through the ages. The exhibits on display will highlight the urban and cosmopolitan features that have characterized Thessaloniki since its foundation.

The illustrated 2008 diary from the Friends of the Museum of Byzantine Culture in Thessaloniki is a harbinger of an exhibition to open soon at the city’s White Tower. The monument has been closed for two years in preparation for an exhibition about Thessaloniki through the ages.

Exhibits will cover every aspect of life in the city, highlighting the urban and cosmopolitan features that have characterized Thessaloniki since its foundation.

Respect for the monument itself and easy access for all visitors are the basic premises of the curators’ approach to the new multimedia exhibition, which will encompass the city’s long history in seven rooms, each on a different floor.

“An historic monument like the White Tower is a museum in and of itself. For that reason, it can’t be loaded with archaeological finds,” Anastasia Tourta, director of the Museum of Byzantine Culture, said. “Besides, how can you squeeze 2,300 years of history into a 450-square-meter space?”

    The interior of Aghios Dimitrios Church (left). Right: Votive offerings for Asclepius (2nd-3rd century AD). The exhibition will encompass the city’s history in seven rooms of the White Tower.

On the ground floor of the tower, a digital map will show the city’s archaeological sites, historic monuments, museums and cultural foundations. The screen will also provide a flow of information about subjects ranging from the water supply system to commerce, the movement of people and ideas, and the coexistence of different cultures and religions.

“Cities like Thessaloniki, Rome and Istanbul have a lengthy, continuous trajectory throughout which they retained their urban character. You can’t ‘museify’ those cities. Their history is alive and scattered around different parts of the present urban fabric. So the exhibition won’t ‘museify’ the city but the images will be an information point,” explained Tourta.

So visitors, especially residents of Thessaloniki, who may have associated the Church of Aghia Sofia with the wedding of a friend but are unaware of the church’s age-old presence, will come to understand the history and worth of their city.

    Brochure (right) for the Greek National Tourist Organization, designed in 1962 by Freddie Carabott. Left: Carabott’s poster for the GNTO (1962) was awarded second prize in an international contest.

The art that touches on our everyday lives and designs the objects we use or the advertisements we see can have an emotional and intellectual impact that we seldom realize. In “Design Routes,” an exhibition currently being held at the Pireos annex of the Benaki Museum, hundreds of examples of graphic art and communication design – advertising posters, graphics, packaging design, illustrations for brochures and books – from the 1960s and 70s will make the visitor feel a twinge of nostalgia. Those who grew up in the 60s and 70s will be reminded of their childhood, others will encounter an iconic image of a bygone, more elegant Greece.

The exhibition is a tribute to the work of Freddie Carabott, Michalis Katzourakis and Agni Katzouraki, who joined forces in the early 60s and formed K&K – Athens Publicity Center, a pioneering design group that received multiple awards, both Greek and international. It was a creative force that helped establish the then fledgling field of graphic design as an autonomous domain and brought a fresh, modern approach to the aesthetics of communication design.

Organized in cooperation with the Greek Literary and Historical Archives (ELIA) and initiated by designer Dimitris Arvanitis who also designed the exhibition’s catalog, the exhibition is an elegant display arranged along a long hallway and ending in a large, circular exhibition space.

The images bring to life the mood of an entire era, a period of modernization, urban development and growth in the field of tourism. There are the advertising posters that K&K designed for the Greek National Tourism Organization (GNTO), for the Athens and Epidaurus festivals, all reminders of a cultural boom (the 60s were the years of the so-called Greek Spring) and of Greece’s reputation as a sophisticated tourist destination. Some posters look like paintings and when compared with the computerized, digital technology effects used in contemporary advertisting, they have a wonderful warmth about them.

There are also advertisements, package design or logos for some of the most classic Greek consumer products or companies: among them Ivi soft drinks, Karandanis bottled water, Sportex trainer shoes, Kourtakis wine and Myloi Agiou Georgiou flour. They are the reminders of a developing market epitomized by several Greek household names.

Many of the designs are still around, such as the logos for National Bank, the Mitera maternity hospital and the Museum of Cycladic Art.

In the exhibition, there are also documentations of site-specific, interior design works. The geometric, abstract murals that Michalis Katzourakis made for interiors in the broadcasting department of the Hellenic Radio and Television Foundation (EIRT) or the melamine murals on the Golden Odyssey cruise liner are indicative of broad-ranging creativity.

As in the murals, a classic modernist style defined by geometric shapes, minimalism and a tendency toward abstraction was typical of the team’s work. Both as a team and independently, the three designers showed a preference for large areas of a single, bold color, austere lines and clear forms. Clarity – a trait seldom found in contemporary advertisements – in terms of both form and content is what best describes their work. In some advertisements, captions or brief written texts enrich the message: In a 1968 magazine advertisement for the Zanussi brand washing machine, a group of elegantly dressed women carry a banner that reads: “Long live freedom, down with hand washing…” The image evokes the liberation spirit of the late 1960s.

The modern, pure visual style in their work was recognizable to an international public. It won them acclaim and opened up the way for international collaborations. It all happened early in their career. The beginning was in 1957. Freddie Carabott, a graphic design graduate from London’s Chelsea and St Martin’s schools, met Michalis Katzourakis, a graphic designer educated in Paris. Carabott, who was also working as an art adviser at the Greek National Tourism Organization (GNTO), asked Katzourakis to join the advisory board. In 1962, Carabott was awarded in an international contest for a poster he had designed for the GNTO. In that same contest, Katzourakis received first prize in the category of painted posters. Encouraged by the success, Carabott and Katzourakis, together with the latter’s wife Agni, a painter who had graduated from London’s Slade School of Fine Art, established the K&K Athens Advertising Center. (D. Tsopelas and P. Kannovos were associates).

Awards, both Greek and international, followed on an annual basis. The Rizzoli Award for best Greek advertisement was given to them from 1964-1969.

In the mid-70s, their collaboration came to an end. The field was gradually changing. In his essay written for the exhibition catalog, graphic designer Spyros Karachristos refers to the advent of multinational companies and of advertising conglomerates as important factors of change.

Although no longer a team, each designer continued their creative work individually. In 1974, Katzourakis founded AMK Architects & Designers and turned to interior design. Agni Katzouraki followed four years later. Since 1979, Carabott has been working as a freelance designer. Michalis Katzourakis focused on painting and sculpture and Agni Katzouraki specialized in interior design and decoration but also accepts selected graphic design commissions.

The Benaki Museum exhibition includes some of these later works. However, its focus is on the 60s and 70s, the period when K&K made an innovative mark in the field of visual communication and paved the way for the designers that followed. The exhibition documents an important chapter in 20th-century Greek graphic design, a body of work that provided inspiration for artists and created images that are still remembered.

“Design Routes” at the Pireos annex of the Benaki Museum, 138 Pireos & Andronikou Street, Athens, tel 210 3453111, through March 23.

Coulentianos arrived in Paris before 63 years, in December 1945, he obtained a scholarship from the French government. After a short passage from the Ecole des Beaux Arts and Zatkin’s workshop in the Grande Chaumiere, the artist distant himself from the academic perception that was instilled within him, by his studies in the Greek Superior School of Fine Arts (1936-1939).

In 1947, his acquaintance with Henri Laurens was very influential for his later work. His sculptures, many of them made out of lead, are a proof of the determining influence of the great Laurens (1947-1952). Since 1952, he started working with iron, rounded organic forms. The “Acrobats” period, between 1952-1959, was very important.

After the making of the last “Acrobat” in 1959, he passed to abstraction. In 1962 he did his first solo exhibition, in the eminent, at the time, Galerie de France. Simultaneously, he started to work together with architects in order to incorporate sculpture into architecture. He attempted to do that by making big sculptures for public buildings and open spaces. At the same period he formulated repetitive decorative elements made out of plaster, cement or concrete that was poured in polyester moulds. A defining feature in the sculptures of this period was the torch-welding with a detachable bronze stick (in the period of the sixties).

In 1966, he moved in central France where he built a workshop that manufactured looms for the production of tapestries, of his own design (1969-1975).

The first bolted sculptures, that characterized his work until the end, came from that same period. Coulentianos started teaching in the School of Decorative Arts in Paris (1975-1976) and after moving in the south of France he taught in the School of Fine Arts in Marseilles (1979-1980).

Between 1979 and 1982 he created a new series of sculptures that was named “New Generation”. With sculptures from this series, he represented Greece, in the 1980, Biennale of Venice. Since then and for the following 15 years he had a tight contact with Greece, until his last exhibition that occurred in 1991.

Coulentianos, remains in the history of sculpture as an artisan, with the complete meaning of the word. His work started with the essential theme of the female figure, naked, sited, lying, standing, acrobat and dancer. Gradually he was lead to dispute the traditional conceptions and liberated himself from specific views towards the human body, his work did not pay tribute to something visible, but to the internal dynamics that seek expression. He remained loyal to the inspiring figures that marked his training in Greece, he particularly loved ancient Greek sculpture and created sculptures that were unadorned, strict, vivid, balanced and very powerful.

Gallery Medousa, 7 Xenokratous Street, Kolonaki, Athens. To March 1st.