From the Pictorial Surface to the Space
Triptych Relief (1983) by Perdikidis Dimitris National Gallery of Greece - Alexandros Soutsos Museum
The last bastion of traditional art, the frame, was destined to fall when reality itself penetrated this framework with its material, ontological substance, violating and annihilating the final remnants of this idealized art and space.
This development had profound consequences for the very essence of painting itself, its poetics, its meaning, and its relationship to the receiver. The abolition of the frame and the penetration of the space automatically signified the transcendence of the traditional boundaries set between the various categories of art (painting, sculpture).
Landscape (ca. 1970) by Kaniaris Vlassis National Gallery of Greece - Alexandros Soutsos Museum
In the second half of the twentieth century, some artists attempted as a group to break out of the asphyxiating climate in Greece, at the end of the Civil War (1946-1949) and actively participated in the ferment that marked the large artistic centres of America at the time.
In 1964 three Greek artists exhibited at the La Fenice Theater in Venice, on the margins of the Biennale, a collection of works entitled "Three Proposals for a New Greek Sculpture".
These artists were Danil (Panagopoulos 1924-2008), Nikos Kessanlis (1930-2004) and Vlassis Caniaris (1928-2011).
Portrait of Dinos Georgoudis (1976) by Kessanlis Nikos National Gallery of Greece - Alexandros Soutsos Museum
Through works that developed in space, through gestures that appropriated space and through drastic interventions in materials, they laid claim to and secured for themselves a position of enterprising originality with the quests of the European avant garde.
Burlap (1992) by Daniel (Panagopoulos) National Gallery of Greece - Alexandros Soutsos Museum
Using informel art as their jumping off point, which the exhibition in Venice typified, these three young Greek painters would immediately become part of the Nouveau Réalisme movement (New Realism), the Parisian version of American Pop-art.
Homage to Goya (1965) by Daniel (Panagopoulos) National Gallery of Greece - Alexandros Soutsos Museum
Daniel, through his boxes and burlap, and employing only a few signifying interventions in ordinary industrial materials, would create sensitive works rich in meaning.
Portrait of Vlassis Caniaris (1965) by Kessanlis Nikos National Gallery of Greece - Alexandros Soutsos Museum
Caniaris would stage his own Theater of the Absurd, using the codes of communication that bridge language and reality in the contemporary world.
As his raw material he would also choose ordinary industrial materials: mesh rids, plaster and second-hand clothes to dress his mannequins.
Coat and hat (ca. 1979) by Pavlos (Dionyssopoulos) National Gallery of Greece - Alexandros Soutsos Museum
Pavlos (Dionysopoulos, 1930-2019) would develop his own style in Paris, in the context of New Realism. Using strips of shredded posters he would create new images and objects imbued with the romantic wind of poetry and nostalgia.
The "palimpsest" images of Chryssa Romanou (1931-2006) emerged from the same climate.
Two chairs (1967) by Tsoclis Kostas National Gallery of Greece - Alexandros Soutsos Museum
Kostas Tsoclis (1930) would follow a similar course leading from Rome to Paris. His most personal quests are focused on the ontological problem of creation.
The relationship between illusion and reality, the suspension between the two worlds, the meditation on the creation and destruction of the image, and the active participation of the spectator in the construction and deconstruction of the work are a few of the problems he has investigated in an aesthetic, poetic and sensitive manner.
Feet from the Devotional Series (1975) by Kontos Dimitris National Gallery of Greece - Alexandros Soutsos Museum
Dimitris Kontos (1931-1996) enriched the Greek avant garde with his gestural lines, his holy scriptures and votive offerings.
Untitled (1972/1982) by Akrithakis Alexis National Gallery of Greece - Alexandros Soutsos Museum
Alexis Akrithakis (1939-1994) created a dense semiology of labyrinths, where the loneliness of all the jostling of the modern megalopolises, is exorcized in joyous colors.
His arrows suggest ways out. His assemblages, his suitcases convey poetic and lyrical flights from a world which oppressed him so overwhelmingly that he was led in the end to self-destruction and an early death.
Neon box (before 1980) by Chryssa (Vardea) National Gallery of Greece - Alexandros Soutsos Museum
Chryssa (Vardea, 1933-2013) has managed to make her presence felt in the difficult American art market, in the context of Abstract Expressionism.
Setting off from inscriptions and advertisements taken from the commercial streets of the large, modern cities, Chryssa has created her own luminous form of graphism, which combines the dynamic gesture of the sculptor with the gesture of a painter from the Far East.
The conclusion we arrive at from this brief survey is that during the Sixties and Seventies, Greek art not only managed to completely coordinate itself with the international currents, but enriched them with original investigative proposals.
Texts: Marina Lampraki-Plaka, Professor Emeritus of the History of Art, ex-Director, National Gallery - Alexandros Soutsos Museum, Athens
Project leader: Efi Agathonikou, Head of Collections Department, National Gallery - Alexandros Soutsos Museum, AthensImages: Stavros Psiroukis & Thalia Kimpari, Photographic Studio, National Gallery - Alexandros Soutsos Museum, Athens
Digital curation:Marina Tomazani, Art Historian, Curator, National Gallery - Alexandros Soutsos Museum
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