Fotis Kontoglou (1896-1965)

He is the leader of the movement for the revival of Byzantine tradition in Greece, an artist who worked towards this end in practice as well as in theoretical texts. Born in Aivali of Asia Minor, he brings with him to Greece a relatively long tradition, which he tries to revive not only as an artist but also as a writer. His works Byzantine Landscape, Portrait of Papadiamantis and Captain Aivali, all of which belong to the Municipal Art Gallery, are some of the best examples of his work, and indeed they belong to those in which Kontoglou used all his powers of renewal and revival. Later, he entered a period of rather conservative reproduction of Byzantine artistic style. In Byzantine Landscape we see the way depth is created according to the Byzantine tradition. The rocks are rendered in the same fashion, and we see the replacement of reproductive exactitude, either with the artistic simplicity of popular art or the codes of Byzantine art.

copyright 1996-97