One-Day Scientific Conference: Greek art critics and art historians in Paris, 1945-1975

The four-year research programme Athènes-Paris 1945-1974, which is being organised by the École Française d’Athènes in collaboration with the Benaki Museum and the Institution for Mediterranean Studies ITE, aims to contribute to the documentation and study of the cultural relations between France and Greece during the period 1945-1975. On that occasion, the International One-Day Conference entitled «Greek art critics and art historians in Paris, 1945-1975 / Critiques et historiens d’art grecs à Paris, 1945 – 1975» will be held at Benaki Museum’s amphitheatre.

The early 20th century Paris was the metropolis of contemporary art and continued, during the years which followed the First World War, to be the main attraction for artists, intellectuals and scholars from all over the world. Among them Greek critics and art historians, such as Aggelos G. Prokopiou, Eleni Vakalo, Tonis Spiteris, George Mourelos, George Petris, Nikos Hadjinicolaou, Marina Lambraki-Plaka, Emmanouil Mavrommatis etc, studied as students of significant professors (Jean Laude, Pierre Francastel, Roland Barthes, Pierre Vilar etc.), followed the developments of art history and criticism and attempted to introduce to the Greek intellectual field the new ideas, critical principles, theories methods as well as the new disciplines and practices that they assimilated in Paris.
The Conference’s main objective is to highlight the diverse nature of the aforementioned issues and to stimulate research and debate around the work and contribution of all these critics, theorists/scholars and art historians, whose presence was crucial for both the evolution of postwar Greek art and the configuration of art-criticism in Greece. A second aim of this Conference is to examine how these dominant in contemporary France trends and theories in art-criticism, were received by the Greek post-war intellectual world.

Conference organizers: Polyna Kosmadaki (Benaki Museum), Eugenios D. Mathiopoulos (University of Crete – Institute for Mediterranean Studies – ITE).