Date/Time
08/12/2021 - 28/02/2022
10:00 - 18:00

Location
B&M Theocharakis Foundation for the Fine Arts and Music

Theophilos represents the tradition of a country and its people. The B. & M. Theocharakis Foundation honours his vast contribution by organizing a large retrospective, in collaboration with the Municipality of Mytilini and the Theophilos Museum. The exhibition will showcase more than 80 landmark works of art from the following collections: Theophilos Museum at Varia, Mytilini, the National Gallery, the Hellenic Parliament, Alpha Bank, the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, the Athens School of Fine Arts, Society of Lesvos Studies, as well as from many acclaimed collectors. The paintings radiate the artist’s spirit and soul, his inner truth that always served and respected the nation’s needs – a nation that has lived both glorious as well as tragic moments, from the heights of glory and grandeur to slavery and uprooting.

“Almost the entire work of our acclaimed folk artist radiates with aesthetic and spiritual emotion” Takis Mavrotas, the curator of the exhibition, notes. “His work is imbued with the history and natural beauty of our land, since the uncompromising painter never ceased to focus his vision at the ancient times and the passions of our people, in a never-ending quest for the truth of life. The simplicity of his paintings, bearing a strong sense of historical and aesthetic continuity, reveals his wisdom with the balanced use of colour intensity and the vivid colour antitheses. Theophilos did not know how to spell or write properly, but still he used to add poorly spelt captions on his paintings in order to affirm or add strength to the very power his images portray, his heroes and Gods, the pine and olive trees, the sea and the mountains. He depicted a vast world from Mytilini to mount Pelion, sparkling with his ardent love for our history, but also images from Constantinople, from Smyrna to Egypt, to Italy, Israel, and Damascus, as well as from the Russo-Japanese Naval Battle and Napoleon’s Army Alignment…”

On the occasion of the exhibition, a comprehensive catalogue will be published, including texts by Stratis Eleftheriades – Tériade, Odysseas Elytis, Giorgos Seferis, Stefanos Daskalakis, Giorgos Rorris, Christos Bokoros, Alexis Veroukas, and Takis Mavrotas.

Curator: Takis Mavrotas

Duration: till February 28 2022