Nicosia, Nicosia, Cyprus
Cyprus is not really a place I would expect to find a
significant collection of paintings and sculptures by famous European artists
of the last five centuries, so I was pleasantly surprised to discover that
there is such a museum in Nicosia. The
A.G. Leventis Gallery is the private collection of Anastasios George Leventis,
a Greek Cypriot businessman who founded a major merchandise trading firm in
West Africa in the mid-twentieth century and devoted his later life to
philanthropy and art collecting with a primary focus on the cultural heritage
of Cyprus and Greece. Parts of his collections of Cypriot antiquities are on
display at the British Museum in London, Metropolitan Museum in New York, and
other galleries around the world.
The A.G. Leventis Gallery in Nicosia was opened in 2014 and
contains 800 works divided into three collections – Cypriot, Greek, and Paris
collections, the last named for the city Leventis lived in for a while where he
acquired most of the European works. The
Cypriot Collection consists of art works by Cypriot artists since 1900. The
Greek Collection includes works by Greek artists of the 19th and 20th
centuries. And the Paris Collection includes works by important European
artists from the 17th through 20th centuries.
The gallery was open late the night we visited, so it gave
us something to do before dinner in Nicosia after the other attractions in town
closed. I enjoyed the sleek modern surroundings and air conditioning almost as
much as I did the artworks.
2025-05-23