SPYROS KOTSALAS captures the raw, bold beauty of the Greek landscape and the nonchalant, everyday details of Athenian life. His oil paintings are odes to the quintessential colour harmonies of Greece, while his small gouache portraits capture the essence of the character of his sitters – the angles and contours of their features sculpturally rendered. … Continue reading
WHEN WORLD-RENOWNED Argentinian artist Adrian Villar Rojas agreed in December of 2015, to take on NEON’s proposition – to conjure up one of his astoundingly original site-specific installations at the National Observatory of Athens and the Hill of Nymphs – I’m sure that no one could have imagined the outcome. But that’s the thing with … Continue reading
PRESENTING avant-garde contemporary art in the most sumptuous of historic buildings, creates an interesting visual oxymoron, for example: between strict, stark cryptic conceptual creativity and an elaborate, eclectic colonial spirit as evident in the neoclassically inspired Goulandris Museum of Cycladic Art’s Stathatos Mansion. Here, you’ll find the ‘DESTE Prize: An Anniversary Exhibition, 1999-2015’ being hosted, … Continue reading
CONCEPTUALLY AND AESTHETICALLY speaking, there’s a vast ocean between Chryssa Verghi’s magical, dark, sea paintings with specks of pink, and Olga Migliaressi-Phoca’s 3-dimensional art, which criticizes contemporary consumer society by playing with brands such as Toblerone. But that’s the beauty of contemporary art – its variety – which you can experience these days at Art … Continue reading
‘The Spirit of Ecstasy’, was one of the first works you encountered at the Benaki Museum’s ‘Art Nouveau’ exhibition. This small, silver figurine resembles a more modern, streamlined version of the ancient statue ‘Nike of Samothrace’ (in the Louvre). Created by Charles Robert Sykes in 1911, it adorns the bonnets of all Rolls-Royces. It is also … Continue reading
IN THE HEART OF ATHENS, that is becoming all the more multicultural with the progress of time, the exhibition ‘ex-pats’ at the Alex Mylona Museum, curated by Apostolis Artinos, and featuring works by Eleni Mylonas and Despina Meimaroglou, explores the whole notion of what it means to leave your homeland, to travel, to return, and … Continue reading
Ok, I admit it… I’m all ‘documented out’. Total documenta overload in fact. So, I’ll keep this short (to the delight of most people I’m sure), and focus merely on a few of the 18 artists at the Benaki Pireos venue of documenta 14, where the first person you will come across is Eva Braun … Continue reading
Happy May 1st to everyone – the day we celebrate with flowers. Here are some I painted years ago at Kew Gardens, where an ancient Greek temple-inspired pavilion lies hidden in the trees. Here in Greece, the weather is very summery at the moment and people have even started swimming, so the flowers won’t be … Continue reading
GOING to an art show, or even trying to practice art, isn’t really top on the list of ‘things to do’ for many people. And that’s a shame, because art has a lot to offer, for people of all ages and classes. In fact recent studies argue that the homo sapiens were more advanced than … Continue reading
IT WAS RIGHT under the Acropolis, on the stone pathway of Dionisiou Aeropagitou, where a group of long riders set off on April 9, for their 100-day journey to Kassel on horseback. The event, part of an art project by Ross Birrell, realised for documenta 14, gathered tourists, journalists and the art crowd under the … Continue reading
art scene athens 