The Pioneer Group is a term used by scholars for a number of vase painters working in potters' quarter of

Kerameikos Kerameikos (, ) also known by its Latinized form Ceramicus, is an area of Athens, Greece, located to the northwest of the Acropolis, which includes an extensive area both within and outside the ancient city walls, on both sides of the Dipylon ...

in ancient Athens around the beginning of the 5th century BC, around the time of the emergence of

red-figure Red-figure vase painting is one of the most important styles of figural Greek vase painting. It developed in Athens around 520 BCE and remained in use until the late 3rd century BCE. It replaced the previously dominant style of black-figure va ...

vase painting, which soon displaced the previously dominant

black-figure Black-figure pottery painting, also known as the black-figure style or black-figure ceramic ( grc, , }), is one of the styles of painting on antique Greek vases. It was especially common between the 7th and 5th centuries BCE, although there are ...

style. Described by the British art historian John Boardman as perhaps the first conscious

art movement An art movement is a tendency or style in art with a specific common philosophy or goal, followed by a group of artists during a specific period of time, (usually a few months, years or decades) or, at least, with the heyday of the movement defin ...

in the western tradition, historians had included a number of artists in the group, including

Epiktetos Epiktetos was an Attic vase painter in the early red-figure style. Besides Oltos, he was the most important painter of the Pioneer Group. He was active between 520 BC and 490 BC. His name translates as "newly acquired", which is most probably a ...

, Euphronios, Euthymides,

Oltos Oltos was a Late Archaic Greek vase painter, active in Athens from 525 BC to 500 BC. About 150 works by him are known. Two pieces, a cup in Berlin (Antikensammlung F 2264) and a cup in Tarquinia (Museo Nazionale Tarquiniese RC 6848), are sign ...

, Phintias, Smikros, Hypsis, and the Dikaios Painter. Archaeologist

John Beazley Sir John Davidson Beazley, (; 13 September 1885 – 6 May 1970) was a British classical archaeologist and art historian, known for his classification of Attic vases by artistic style. He was Professor of Classical Archaeology and Art at the Un ...

was the first to identify these artists as a coherent group in his works published in the 1940s, in which he developed a taxonomy of

ancient Greek pottery Ancient Greek pottery, due to its relative durability, comprises a large part of the archaeological record of ancient Greece, and since there is so much of it (over 100,000 painted vases are recorded in the Corpus vasorum antiquorum), it has exe ...

by style. No documentary evidence remains of the artists, and everything we know about them was deduced from their surviving work. The Pioneer Group were not innovators of the red-figure technique but rather late adopters of the practice developed by

bilingual vase Bilingual vase painting is a special form of ancient Greek vase painting. The term, derived from linguistics, is essentially a metaphorical one; it describes vases that are painted both in the black-figure and in the red-figure techniques. It also ...

painters such as Andokides and

Psiax Psiax was an Attic vase painter of the transitional period between the black-figure and red-figure styles. His works date to ''circa'' 525 to 505 BC and comprise about 60 surviving vases, two of which bear his signature. Initially he was allocat ...

, who produced pottery featuring both the black-figure and red-figure techniques. Coming some ten years after the earliest work in red-figure style, Euphronios' first works are thought to have been produced circa 520 BC. As a group, their work makes frequent reference to one another, often in a playful competitive spirit; Euthymides boasts on one of his signed pots (Munich 2307): ''hos oudepote Euphronios'' ("as never Euphronios"). Their work is distinctive for its simple rendering of dress, bold handling of anatomy, experimental use of foreshortening and a thematic preference for representations of symposia.

References

* R. T. Neer. ''Styles and Politics in Athenian Vase Painting: The Craft of Democracy, ca. 530–470 BCE''. Cambridge University Press, 2002. * John Boardman. ''Athenian Red Figure Vases: The Archaic Period: A Handbook.'' London: Thames and Hudson, 1975. {{Authority control Ancient Greek vase painters Anonymous artists of antiquity