Contemporary Greek art is defined as the art produced by Greek artists after

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

Painting-Sculpture

Abstract Expressionism

Theodoros Stamos Theodoros Stamos (Greek: Θεόδωρος Στάμος) (December 31, 1922 – February 2, 1997) was a Greek-American painter. He is one of the youngest painters of the original group of abstract expressionist painters (the so-called " Irasc ...

(1922-1997) was an acclaimed abstract expressionist artist from

Lefkas Lefkada (, ''Lefkáda'', ), also known as Lefkas or Leukas (Ancient Greek and Katharevousa: Λευκάς, ''Leukás'', modern pronunciation ''Lefkás'') and Leucadia, is a Greek island in the Ionian Sea on the west coast of Greece, connected to ...

, who lived and worked in New York in the 1940s and 50s. His work has been exhibited throughout the world, and can be found in major museum collections such as the

Whitney Museum of Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is a modern and contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. The institution was foun ...

, the

Guggenheim Museum The Guggenheim Museums are a group of museums in different parts of the world established (or proposed to be established) by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Museums in this group include: * The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, Ne ...

, Smithsonian and the

National Gallery of Art The National Gallery of Art is an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of charge, the museum was privately established in ...

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

Dimitris Koukos (1948-) is also considered as a leading expressionist painter, mainly renowned for his abstract work and landscapes. Koukos has had over 30 one man exhibitions and participated in several group exhibitions in Athens, Paris, Boston, and Moscow. The artist's works can be found in private collections in the

U.S. The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 contiguous ...

, France, Italy,

U.K. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

as well as at the National Gallery in Athens, the Pieridis Museum, the Vorres Museum, the Cultural Institute of the

National Bank of Greece The National Bank of Greece (NBG; ) is a banking and financial services company with its headquarters in Athens, Greece. Founded in 1841 as the newly independent country's first financial institution, it has long been the largest Greek bank, a ...

, the Greek Ministry of Culture and the

Ministry of Education An education ministry is a national or subnational government agency politically responsible for education. Various other names are commonly used to identify such agencies, such as Ministry of Education, Department of Education, and Ministry of Pub ...

Cyprus Cyprus (), officially the Republic of Cyprus, is an island country in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Situated in West Asia, its cultural identity and geopolitical orientation are overwhelmingly Southeast European. Cyprus is the List of isl ...

Kinetic Art

Takis Takis may refer to: * Takis (snack), a spicy, roll-shaped snack * Takis Christoforidis, a Greek actor * Takis Fotopoulos, a Greek political philosopher * Takis Ikonomopoulos, a Greek football player * Takis Kanellopoulos a Greek film director * Tak ...

was born in 1925 in Athens, and is an internationally acclaimed self-taught sculptor. He travelled, worked exhibited in Athens, Paris, London, New York and in many other cities. He is particularly known for his telemagnetic sculpture that formed the basis of his aesthetic expression and his musical sculptures. Takis' musical sculptures are based on the simple concept of using magnetic waves caused by electricity as a means to activate repeated musical sounds: the latter are to be heard every time a needle strikes a string, when attracted by a magnet. He won the Grand Prize at the Paris New Biennale in 1985. An illustrative example would be the installation of a real forest of numerous Signs in the Place de la Defence in Paris (1984–87), the original and imaginative illumination of the Arc de Triomphe at the same period, the transformation of the aqueduct at Beauvais into a musical tower with a network of vertical metallic strings, in 1992, and his design for the layout of a subway station in Toulouse in 1993. Takis' non-morphological inquiries have continued through successive rejections of representationalism; his method and the acoustic sensations which it calls forth retain their austerity. These are the features which place his artistic inventions among the most important achievements of contemporary, post-World War II art.

Arte povera

Arte povera Arte Povera (; literally "poor art") was an art movement that took place between the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s in major cities throughout Italy and above all in Turin. Other cities where the movement was also important are ...

, artists use any medium they could get for free or very, very cheap. The main Greek representative of

arte povera Arte Povera (; literally "poor art") was an art movement that took place between the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s in major cities throughout Italy and above all in Turin. Other cities where the movement was also important are ...

Jannis Kounellis Jannis Kounellis (; 23 March 1936 – 16 February 2017) was a Greek Italian artist based in Rome. A key figure associated with Arte Povera, he studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome. Life and work Kounellis was born in Piraeus, Greece i ...

, who introduced ''found objects'' in his paintings, such as live animals but also fire, earth, burlap sacks, gold. He replaced the canvas with bed frames, doorways, windows or simply the gallery itself.

Stuckism

Stuckism is an international artistic movement that was created as a reaction to conceptual art. Stuckist painter

Odysseus Yakoumakis Odysseus Yakoumakis (; born 1956) is a Stuckist artist, painter and illustrator, based in Athens, Greece. He is the founder of the first Greek Stuckist group, The Romantic Anonymous Fellowship, and organiser of the first international Stuckist ...

in September 2004,founded the first Greek group of Stuckism International named The Romantic Anonymous Fellowship to oppose to the provinciality of the mainstream contemporary Greek art and in particular

post-modernism Postmodernism encompasses a variety of artistic, cultural, and philosophical movements that claim to mark a break from modernism. They have in common the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of depicting the wor ...

Performance Art

Leda Papaconstantinou is known on the Greek art scene as a pioneer in the fields of

performance art Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...

. After beginning her studies in Greece, she continued in England from 1967 to 1971 at the Loughton College of Art then at the Kent Institute of Art and Design. Her first performance films, shot in Super 8 in 1969, show a remarkable aptitude at combining bodily language and the language of experimental cinema and materials (Oh Godard – Celebrating Godard, Self Portrait, 1969). In her films, she and other artist collaborators (

Sally Potter Charlotte Sally Potter (born 19 September 1949) is an English film director and screenwriter. She directed '' Orlando'' (1992), which won the audience prize for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival. Early life Potter was born and raised in L ...

, Stuart Brisley, Marc Camille Chaimowicz) accomplish series of intensely dramatic actions in very intricate visual installations. Inspired by

Antonin Artaud Antoine Maria Joseph Paul Artaud (; ; 4September 18964March 1948), better known as Antonin Artaud, was a French artist who worked across a variety of media. He is best known for his writings, as well as his work in the theatre and cinema. Widely ...

and

Jean Genet Jean Genet (; ; – ) was a French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. In his early life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but he later became a writer and playwright. His major works include the novels '' The Th ...

’s theatre, to which she devoted two pieces, she uses the body to represent the coalition of antithetical elements, such as feminine/masculine, nature/art, memory/subconscious, eros/thanatos, historical time/present time. Georgia Sagri is an artist and a founding organizer of the

Occupy Wall Street Occupy Wall Street (OWS) was a left-wing populist movement against economic inequality, capitalism, corporate greed, big finance, and the influence of money in politics that began in Zuccotti Park, located in New York City's Financial ...

movement. Georgia Sagri's social activism (alongside her artistic activities) dates back to 1997, when she was a member of the Void Network in Athens. Sagri has organized the perambulatory curatorial project Saloon and the audio-only magazine Forté since 2009. In 2013 she initiated the semi-public and semi-personal space

atter Atter is an older Germanic term for " poisonous bodily fluid", especially venom of a venomous animal, such as a snake, dragon or other reptile, but also other vile corrupt or morbid substance from the body, such as pus from a sore or wound, as ...

YLE in Athens, with the mission to develop a new model for the contemporary work-life structure. She has exhibited and participated in

documenta 14 Documenta 14 was the fourteenth edition of the art exhibition documenta which took place in 2017 in both Kassel, Germany, its traditional home, and Athens, Greece. It was held first in Athens from 8 April to 16 July, and in Kassel from 10 Ju ...

(2017), Manifesta 11 (2016), Istanbul Biennial (2015), La biennale de Lyon (2013),

Whitney Biennial The Whitney Biennial is a biennial exhibition of contemporary American art organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. The event began as an annual exhibition in 1932; the first biennial was held in 1973. It is considered ...

(2012), Thessaloniki Biennale (2011), and the

Athens Biennale The Athens Biennale (abbr. AB) is an international cultural event held every two years at various locations in Athens, consisting of a large-scale exhibition and a diverse programme of side events, such as performances, workshops, lectures etc. I ...

(2007). Mary Zygouri addresses issues related to individual identity and social crisis in the contemporary world. In her work she invents and impersonates fictional characters in reality, false identities presented in public actions and video-performances with symbolic and paradoxical results. She focuses on the notion of self in relation to systems of power, censorship, and surveillance. Starting from historical events, investigating archives, biographies, and literary narratives, she alters the past and its many interpretations, by transferring, re-signifying, and representing them in contemporary frames of reference, relocating them in contemporary reality. FYTA are a Greek performance-art duo who curate regular art events as well as producing their own artefacts. They participated in the 4th and 6th

and are described as "far from a fringe group in the Greek art world".

Digital Art

Miltos Manetas is an artist who makes paintings, videoworks, prints and performances about video games, players and computer hardware.

Andreas Angelidakis Andreas () is a name derived from the Greek language, Greek noun ἀνήρ ''anēr'', with genitive ἀνδρός ''andros'', which means "man". See the article on Andrew for more information. The Scandinavian name is earliest attested as antreo ...

is an architect and artist working at the intersection of digital culture and architectural production. He is one of the first artists who treated the

internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

as a real place, a site where he designed and built online communities such as the Chelsea Project and Neen World. He also designed and built spaces, intended to appear as computer renderings, sparking a discussion as to whether they were ever built (Pause pavilion, Stockholm 2002) and spaces that included a garden of mummified plants used as a virtual horizon for a laser beauty clinic (Forever Laser, Geneva 1998 and 2003). Angelidakis has realized projects in Sweden, Switzerland, United States and Italy for publications, museums and cultural foundations. Lydia Venieri although known as painter and mixed media sculptor started doing internet art in 1994What's New: March 1995
/ref> with her showing of Fi

at the FIAC95. This was followed by Her Story, Apology (addressed to the artist

). Her last digital work Moonlight was released in 2008 for the iPhone.

References

External links

Deste foundation official site

National Museum of Contemporary Art official site

State Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki official site

Andreas Angelidakis

Angelo Plessas

AngeloSays Blog

Venieri's Internet Art

Bibliography

* ''Greek Horizons: Contemporary Art from Greece'' (1998) Efi Strousa, Roger Wollen, Tullie House Museum, Art Gallery Carlise, England * ''Modern and Contemporary Art in Greece'' (1984) Hans-Jörg Heusser AICARC Center, Zürich * ''In Present Tense: Young Greek Contemporary Artists'' (2007) The National Museum of Contemporary Art {{DEFAULTSORT:Contemporary Greek Art