Parallel viewing: Artworks from the Bank of Greece Collection

Spanning almost 100 years, the Bank of Greece Collection is one of the most acclaimed clusters of modern Greek art. Many of the works it contains are already distinct for their significant historic character, with the Collection being constantly enriched, in its modern trajectory, with interesting pieces that reflect newer artistic styles.

In the exhibition “Parallel Viewing”, hosted at the B. & M. Theocharakis Foundation for the Fine Arts and Music, 70 artworks from the Collection, of different techniques and from different eras, reach out to art lovers, in the hope that their first-ever parallel viewing will prompt an open and creative dialogue. The three main sections of the exhibition incorporate smaller “cycles of viewing”, wherein modern or contemporary pieces from the Collection find themselves side by side with historical ones, thus shedding light on their connections or contrasts, and the interpretations that emerge.

The exhibition features old and new painterly conquests that make reference to places, landscapes, real and imaginary forms, everyday or symbolic stories. Hence, indicatively, Athenian landscapes by Panayiotis Tetsis and Spyros Vassiliou are accompanied by modern readings of the city by Ilias Papailiakis, Zafos Xagoraris or Eirene Efstathiou. Different views of the natural landscape meet in works by Konstantinos Maleas, Spyros Papaloukas, Dimitrios Galanis, but also Michalis Madenis, Juliano Kaglis, Io Angeli. Artworks by Nikolaos Gyzis and Michael Axelos, but also by Yorgos Lazongas, Jannis Psychopedis, Vana Xenou and Alexandra Athanassiades purvey interpretations of myths and history. The ways in which human form can be represented are canvassed through the works of Georgios Iakovidis, Yannis Tsarouchis, Giorgos Rorris, Stefanos Daskalakis, Tassos Mantzavinos, Makis Theofylaktopoulos and others. Styles other than representation that open up to spirituality, materiality, visual experimentations or allegoric meaning, are unveiled in the works of Jannis Spyropoulos, Dico Byzantios, Celeste Polychroniadi, Yannis Michailidis, Yiannis Adamakos, Rena Papaspyrou, Opy Zouni, Leda Papaconstantinou, Vassilis Gerodimos, Antonis Donef etc.

The dialectics between the works project relations of inspiration or subversion, reference or redefinition. Eventually, the parallel viewing provides evidence of the innumerable ways in which artists appose, absorb or dismiss images and doctrines of the past, how they move along the long stretch of history, and how they envelop, in their own time, both past and future.