Vlassis Caniaris
Arrivederci – Willkommen
Past
26 February – 28 March 2009
11 Haritos Street, Kolonaki
A solo exhibition of Vlassis Caniaris with an installation titled “Arrivederci – Willkommen”.
Created in 1976 and exhibited in Hanover and Warsaw, this landmark work has never before been shown in Greece. Focusing primarily on the sociological aspect of immigration, Caniaris, in this work, captures the faceless, anonymous emigrants that poured into Germany in the 1960s looking for work and the promise of a better life.
Caniaris' interest in the plight of man in his everyday life has been evident in his work from the beginning. The terrible mining accident in 1957 in Marcinelle in Belgium, where approximately 400 Italian coal miners lost their lives, affected Caniaris so deeply that he responded by painting a series of abstract works in which he tried to convey the deep emotion this event had triggered in him. Three years later, in a series titled “Walls”, he tried to reconstruct the images and atmosphere of Athens during the German occupation.
Artists
Vlassis Caniaris
Vlassis Caniaris (Athens, 1928 – 2011) was always a keen observer of his surroundings but also of the world at large. Thus his iconography has always focused on socio-political themes. He is one of the most significant artists of the post-war period in Greece and contributed to the emergence of a new artistic climate. From 1956 to 1960 he lived and studied in Rome and then settled in Paris until 1971. From 1973 to 1975 he lived in Berlin and then returned to Athens where he lived and worked until his death. He studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts (1950-1955),The School of Fine Arts, Rome (1959) and the University of Athens, School of Medicine (1946-1950). In 1976 he was elected to the chair in Architecture at the National Technical University in Athens and remained until 1996.
Installation Views
