Paxos Festival 2022

Slide Lectures 


Thursday 8 September 2022,

8:15-9:30 pm

Old School Yard, Loggos, Paxos 

Greek Art and the Creation of Modern Greek Identity, 1821-1970

A lecture in Greek by Chris Boïcos


Theodoros Vryzakis The Oath of the Church in Agia Lavra in Kalavryta (25 March 1821) 1851                                                                         Benaki Museum, Athens
Theodoros Vryzakis The Oath of the Church in Agia Lavra in Kalavryta (25 March 1821) 1851 Benaki Museum, Athens

  Giannis Tsarouhis  The Neon 1965  National Gallery, Athens
Giannis Tsarouhis The Neon 1965 National Gallery, Athens

Emerging from many centuries of Ottoman and Venetian domination and a painful war of Independence in the 1820s, the new nation of Greece had to forge not only a system of governance but also an identity as an independent and modern nation within the European context of its time.

 

In our lecture we will see how this quest for a unique Greek identity is reflected in the work of Greek artists from the time of the monarchy of Otto of Bavaria (1832-1862) to the later 20th century. We will see how the Revolutionary heroes and martyrs of 1821, the revival of ancient Greek history and the persistence of the Orthodox traditions inherited from the Byzantine era, all contribute to this quest in an often contradictory mix in the art of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

 

In the later 20th century, Greek artists were forced to confront the impact of Western European and international Modernism. By so doing, they nevertheless persisted in finding a ways of preserving a native identity by introducing images from a legendary past and the Greek environment into the modern styles imported from abroad.

 

Theodoros Vryzakis, NIkephoros and Nikos Lytras, Kostantinos Parthenis, Fotis Kontoglou, Hatzikyriakos-Gikas, Giannis Tsarouhis, Panagiotis Tetsis, Alekos Fassianos and Pavlos Habidis are only a few of the artists whose iconic imagery of modern Greece we will be covering in our talk. 



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