ΘΗΤΕΙΑ

23.04.2024 – 25.05.2024

Opening:

Tuesday, April 23, 2024, 19:00

Participating artists:

Fotis Varthis, Ioanna Kafida, Fotis Kontoglu, Kostas Lavdas,

Nikos Moschos, Emmanouil Bitsakis, Stelios Faitakis, Fikos, Georgia Fambris

Curated by: George Mylonas

"Easter" in Hebrew means passage, crossing. His own passage into the artistic life of the place was sealed with the premature departure of Stelios Faitakis on October 6, 2023. He was only 47 years old. From his beginnings in street art, the artist adopted the stylized rendering of Byzantine form, and he first saw truly groundbreaking art on the walls of the Byzantine Museum and in the collection of St. Catherine's Monastery in Sinai, in his homeland of Crete. He declared himself a "religious painter" and although young in years, he was aware that he was part of a great tradition, boldly stating: "I like the idea of speaking an artistic language that has deep roots... and at the end of the day, it continues to be a form of religious art that I use personally for exactly what it is, regardless of the subject."

A group of seven Greek creators, all from Faitakis's generation, gather at Roma Gallery to honor the prematurely lost painter. Their work in the exhibition does not only constitute a tribute but also reveals their common origins, elements drawn from a shared root: inverted perspective, linear executions, geometric patterns, frontal arrangement of forms, absence of the third dimension—all taught by the Byzantine painting language creatively reshaped into compositions of secular content. The goal therefore, is to highlight the way in which artists of the younger generation utilized and integrated elements of our painting tradition into their artistic considerations.

Kostas Lavdas, Manolis Bitsakis, and Fikos painted works specifically for the purpose of the exhibition. Lavdas dedicates to him a monumental, in size, composition based on geometric forms echoing the spirit of the revolutionary individual, the same spirit that Faitakis celebrated. Bitsakis encounters Faitakis in the paradoxical element, alluding to images - visions of the mysteries or to synaxaria of saints, while Fikos depicts him as a warrior in ninja attire amidst a golden field (Faitakis loved and practiced martial arts). Placing fragmented figures in a timeless landscape, Georgia Fambris utilizes her body and idealizes it through subtle suggestions, much like a sacred icon projecting the body of a martyr. Equally arbitrary, Nikos Moschos draws from Christian iconography the theme of the "Annunciation of the Theotokos", portraying not the divine figure, but an ordinary person as an entity powerless in the face of the transcendent.

The art of engraving is represented by Fotis Vartzis with three compositions, drawing from the reservoir of tradition. The solid Byzantine design that he has conquered gives voice to folk tales without being lifeless, detached from the rhythms of modern life. Elements of folk tradition are appropriated by Ioanna Kafida as a means to narrate her own Procession of the Holy Icon. A painted manuscript, belonging to the doctrine of a folk artistry, from which, as she admits, while painting, she was reminded of Konstantinos Kontoglou's words: "It's called tradition because through it, from generation to generation, people hand down what they loved and honored and made it the essence of their lives."

In the present and at Roma, Fotis Kontoglou has a strong presence in the form of a military saint from the Peribleptos Monastery in Mystras. The restoration and cleaning work on images undertaken by the painter in the citadel in 1936 allowed him to complete the attachment of types of Byzantine art to his personal idiom. However, the painter was not only an iconographer. He also loved travelers and corsairs and even wrote a book about them titled Adamant Souls. The great artist and thinker discovered the vein of Byzantine painting and dared something unique in his time: to squeeze secularism into the garb of spirituality, to sanctify the pirate, the warrior, the murderer. From the collection of Dionysis Photopoulos, the central position in the gallery is occupied by "Louizos Marotos."

But aren't Faitakis's heroes just like them? Perhaps the most successful characterization condenses in an article dedicated to him titled "the iconographer of barricades". In the freedom of his subject matter, Faitakis had a personal, but essential apprenticeship to Fotis Kontoglou, as he was the first to transfer the Byzantine painting system to his secular painting. Just as Kontoglou did in the past century, Faitakis with his choices paved the way for Byzantine art to be expressed with various references in contemporary artistic creation. In order to speak for his time, he boldly proceeded with personal inventions, with expressions with pop characteristics, integrated into a new-Byzantine style, contrary to the dominant trend that wants the artist to express himself with digital media.

And while the exhibitions he held were measured, his presence at international Biennales decisively brought his art abroad. With his example, Faitakis armed young artists with confidence to persist in a painting that is not the current currency of the era. Thus, although brief, the passage of the painter proved decisive for his entire generation. It has not closed and will be adequately evaluated in the future. Faitakis was a peculiar faithful. He showed everyday citizens as butchers, crowned rebels in a hell that opens in the streets of metropolises, with the sense of a believing painter. Science may remain indifferent for centuries to the dogmatic dictates of religion, but in the consciousness of the painter, it became the very "doctrine." He illustrated scientific narrowness, he ridiculed the worship of technology. The spirit of the painter reflects the work titled For the Improvement of Agriculture, which, for the first time, is presented to the Greek audience (it has been exhibited at the School of Fine Arts in Paris, April-March 2022).

Opening: Tuesday, April 23, 2024, 19:00

Exhibition duration: April 23, 2024 – May 25, 2024

Roma Gallery: Roma 5, 10673, Athens.

Opening hours: Tuesday, Thursday, Friday 10:00 – 20:00, Wednesday, Saturday 10:00 – 16:00

Free Admission

White flokati(2022)

White flokati(2022)