Giorgos Ioannou
POP?
Past
4 July – 21 September 2024
11 Haritos Street, Kolonaki
Kalfayan Galleries (Haritos 11, Kolonaki, Athens) present the exhibition “Giorgos Ioannou (1926 – 2017) – POP?”.The exhibition is the starting point of a series of future projects aimed at promoting – both in Greece and abroad -the work of Ioannou, one of the most important painters of the post-war period. A collector of images and objectswith influences from comic books and Pop Art to Art Nouveau, Ioannou developed a purely personal visual idiomwhere the experience becomes an image, the comic co-exists organically with caustic socio-political commentary,personal memory meets collective memory, the present goes hand in hand with the past, and reality intertwineswith the imaginary.The exhibition presents works mainly from the 1970s and illuminates the hybrid, essentially anti-pop character ofIoannou's work. He clearly used the language of Pop Art (comics, posters, product packaging) but he neverembraced the Pop culture of his time. On the contrary, Ioannou was suspicious of it. The Pop Art of the Greekartist was denunciatory and did not share the optimism of its American manifestation. Ioannou appropriates thevisual language of pop art to aggressively criticize on the one hand the political situation and on the other hand theemerging, at the time, culture of mass consumption and its symbolic use in the Western world as a synonym forfreedom.
Artists
Giorgos Ioannou
Giorgos (Georges) loannou (1926-2017) was one of the most prominent post-war Greek artists. Born in Athens in 1926, he studied painting in Athens and Paris.
Installation Views
