The show is one of the annual exhibitions held by Kalfayan Galleries dedicated to the most important Greek representatives of Modernism.

Pivotal work of this exhibition will be Akrithakis’ remarkable installation titled “The Bar” which was first shown at the Bernier Gallery in Athens in 1981.  Until recently it was in an American collection and has recently found its way back to Greece.

Incorporating natural, everyday materials chosen for their evocative qualities, this landmark, life-size work reflects in vivid terms the fusion between art and life that the artist expressed so powerfully in his work.  

Largely self-taught, Akrithakis embarked on an intellectual and artistic life that led him from Athens to Paris and then to Berlin in 1968 where he spent some of his most creative and productive years before returning to Athens in 1984.  Akrithakis kept company with intellectuals in Athens and, during the period that he lived in Berlin, through his wife’s restaurant, “Fofi’s”, which became a meeting place for the artistic world of the German capital.  It is, therefore, likely that the “Bar” is a reference to this time of his life.

The exhibition will include also works from his Berlin period that reveal the unique microcosm of archetypal symbols and codes that the artist created to express his personal experiences.  Symbols such as suitcases and bicycles, hearts and suns, arrows and flames as well as his lacey calligraphic style known as “tsiki-tsiki” from the scratching sound that this pen made on the paper, make up his universe in which travel and adventure were the main themes.  Akrithakis today remains one of the most important figures of post war art in Greece.