Athens, Greece
When I go a country’s capital city, I usually like to go to
its national gallery or other primary art museum. I find you can get a strong
feeling for the country’s history and character through the ages from its
paintings and sculptures. Greece’s
National Gallery is housed in a large very modern building about a mile east of
Syntagma Square. Most tourists are
primarily interested in Athens’ ancient historical sites and the National
Archaeological Museum. The National Gallery is not on tour itineraries and not
a place very many other travelers make it to.
The reason for that is likely that its collection includes
few paintings by artists known outside of Greece. Unlike the National Gallery in London, the
Louvre, the Prado, the Rijksmuseum, or museums in big German or Italian cities,
the Greek National Gallery’s collection of European paintings by non-Greek
European painters is small and does not include any well-known works. Among the vast majority of paintings done by
Greek artists, the only name I was
familiar with was Dominikos Theotokopoulos, better
known as El Greco, who was from Crete but spent most of his career in Spain.
With the exception of three El Grecos and a number of older
icons, everything in the museum dates from the era of independence to the
present. However, the modern and contemporary galleries on the top from with
art from the 1960s onward was temporarily closed for renovation. As best I can
tell, during the two centuries since modern Greek independence, Greek art
mostly followed currents elsewhere in Europe, especially that of countries
where Greek students tended to study art.
One of those places was Munich during the mid-nineteenth century, so
numerous Greek artists adopted what is known as the Biedermeier style, which to
me looks very central European.
Strangely, Impressionism was a style that was taken up by very few Greek
painters. Others adapted cubism and
seemed to be Picasso or Bracque imitators.
I guess that was what was selling at the time – artists have to eat too.
2025-05-23