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Greek participation in the Venice Biennale and government intervention in Art during the 1930s.

“The politicians of this country have been very careful, whenever organization change or the replacement of specific persons is taking place, policy solutions along general lines which are accordance with the proposals of the artists whom they favour”. 

(Michalis Tombros, “The State and Art” Voice of the People newspaper, 14 January 1932.

When Venizelos returned triumphantly to power in 1928, the Liberals did not hesitate to make a determined – in effect, dictatorial – intervention in the direction of implementing their plans for the modernising of the visual arts. The dismissal of Yeorgios Iakovidis from the post of Director of the National Gallery – during their first period in office, in 1918, at the time when the National Gallery’s Regulations were published [1] – did not satisfy them. Indeed, in view of the stratagems implemented by the teaching staff of the school of Fine Arts in electing Nikolaos Lytras instead of Konstantinos Pathenis in 1923, in appointing Dimitris Biskinis by bureaucratic sleight of hand in 1928 [2] and in electing Umvertos Argyros in 1929 [3], Ministerial intervention in the School seemed the only way out.

Law 4366/1929[4] formed the basis for this intervention. Not only did it give the Minister the power to appoint the Director and teachers of the school by decree: under Articles 3 and 4 of the Law, which were obvious contrivances designed specifically to allow the appointment of Kostas Dimitriadis as professor and Director and Konstantinos Parthenis as professor, gave legislative protection to the dependence of Modern Greek art upon that of Western Europe, since those to be appointed were required to have distinguished themselves in official exhibitions abroad and to have lived for at least ten years in international art centres[5]. It was thus clear that Greek artists were being recommended to orientate themselves towards the aesthetic views predominant in other countries, since only such an alignment could bring about distinction in the official exhibitions held there and, subsequently, the election to the staff of the School by which so much store was set. In implementation of this Law, the decree appointing Parthenis to the School was issued in November 1929[6], and was followed shortly afterwards – on the personal request of Venizelos – by the appointment of Dimitriadis as professor and Director[7]. Apart from reorganising the School to an extent unparalleled either before or since, Dimitriadis also undertook the task of arranging the Greek participation in the Venice Biennale[8], which was to involve him in a great deal of hard work.
Greece must have been invited to Venice as far back as the VI Biennale in 1904[9], but despite the promptings of the Press that “it should be known in Greece how much significance is attached in other countries to artistic production[10]” and that wish that “those in power should realise the importance of the artistic education of the people for the more general rise of a Nation[11]”, those in power in Greece had no inclination whatever to bear the cost of organising the Greek contribution. In 1925, Fotis Yofyllis conducted an extensive investigation of the matter and published in the columns of the newspaper Proia interviews with a number of Greek visual artists. They all drew particular attention to the question of the general indifference of the State to the fine arts and stressed the dimension of national prestige which would stem from participation in the Biennale[12]. If we appear there, said Constantine Maleas, that will be progress for Art in this country. We will see what the have to say about our works. Here, the circle of artists is a narrow one and our work cannot be judged. If the State is in any way sensitive towards such issues, it ought to help, since the other Balkan countries are usually relatively well represented at that exhibition. Furthermore, I know that this exhibition is of the greatest importance for world art”[13]. Periklis Lytras was quoted as saying, “A clerk told me that the Ministry of Finance will approve a sum of money for our artists to participate […] because all the Balkan States will be participating in these [exhibitions]… Even if only one Greek talent emerges, that will be equivalent to a military victory. Was Dimitriadis’ success in Paris not worth a victory in battle?[14]
The late 1920s were, of course, a period in which national disputes were settled peacefully rather than by military conflict, and for that reason the assistance of  Kostas Dimitriadis was needed to give a cultural dimension – and, in effect, sole proof of existence – to the pact of friendship between Greece and Italy which Venizelos and Benito Mussolini signed on 20 September 1928, as part of Venizelos’ efforts to partially disengage Greece from the influence of the Great Powers [15].
The Italians undertook the obligation of opening a cultural centre – the Casa d’ Italia – in Athens, while Dimitriadis, with the unreserved support of Foreign Minister Andreas Michalacopoulos[16], went ahead with the construction of the Greek pavilion for the Biennale. He had the competitions for the pavilion annulled[17] and took care to ensure that the commission for its design went to an architect friend of his, Papandreou[18], who lived in Paris. The pavilion was built in a neo-Byzantine style, a decision in which we should detect not only an answer to the neo-Renaissance style of the Italian Institute and the desire to demonstrate Greece’s independence of European Modernism, but also a tone directly reminiscent of the Byzantine dimension of Hellenism or of the “Greekness” of Byzantium. This issue was highly topical in Greece at the time and constituted an extremely controversial historical question because of the nationalist antagonism which continued to be acute in the Balkans ever after the First World War[19].
Construction work on the pavilion began in September 1931, and the foundation stone was laid by Michalacopoulos in person, in his capacity as Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister[20].
However, the economic crisis prevented the work from being completed before 1934, and as a result the planned Greek participation in the 1932 Biennale had to be deferred[21]. If Italy had no been at this time so strong in the Balkans as was actually the case, and had there been delays in the building and operation of the Italian cultural institute in Athens[22], it seems certain that there would have been a risk of Greece failing to take part even in the 1934 Biennale: the machinery of state had been paralysed to a large extent by the Depression, the fall from power of the Venizelist (Liberal) party, governmental instability, the revival of the question of the monarchy after the failure of the coup d’etat against Venizelos, and the more general and continuing political and social crisis.
In 1934, after the Biennale had organised a second exhibition in Athens (1993) – accompanied by Marinetti himself[23] – Greece officially took part for the first time in the Venice exhibition.
It is worth noting at this point that, of the six exhibitions by other European states held in Greece in the pre-War period, three were of Italian art and were organised by the Venice Biennale[24]. As a result, modern art as a whole was blamed both for the bombastic and provocative manner of Marinetti and for the relatively poor quality of the exhibits. The Italian Week of 1931 and the Futurist exhibition of 1933 – with its aeropitturas – were more successful in causing wry comment than in improving, as was their aim, the image of Italy current in Greece The exhibition of engravings by Soviet artists held at the Atelier Gallery in 1934, on the other hand, caused a sensation in Athens[25]. Thus, the exhibition in 1938 to which the introduction was written by Antonio Maraini, Secretary–General of the Biennale, consisted of engravings and decorative works which were in line with the tendency for a “return to good order” current more generally in Europe at the time and satisfied the preference for representational art which had always been predominant in Athens[26]. Greek participation in the 1934 Biennale could be described as the first official Greek representation at an international exhibition elsewhere in Europe since Rome in 1911. The “confrontation” between Modern Greek art and European art which Konstantinos Maleas had called for began, in effect, at this time: thereafter, with the exception of the period of the War, Greece was regularly present in Venice.
Before 1934, we know of only three unofficial Greek participants: Alexandros Mavrogordatos in 1910[27], Cesare Sofianopoulos in 1924[28] and Dimitris Cocotsis in 1926[29].
In 1934, the newly – built Greek pavilion housed what was in effect a Panhellenic exhibition in miniature, with a total of 165 works by 55 painters and engravers and 10 sculptors[30].
The selection committee for this massive team of representatives consisted of Antonios Benakis, Nikos Calogeropoulos and Oumvertos Argyros, who were assisted by various art organizations[31]. The number of Greek participants should be attributed to their conciliatory desire to place everyone, but they failed miserably to please the Italians[32]. The presence of the Greek artists went almost unnoticed, and very few works were sold[33]. Michalis Tombros, who was engaged at the time in a battle in the Press with Kostas Dimitriadis, in his attempt to be appointed to a teaching post in School of Fine Arts, launched a violent attack on this state of affairs in the columns of the last issue of his short- lived periodical 20th Century<[34]. His target was not only the number of the Greek representatives, but also the conservative inclinations of the artists concerned.
In 1935, there was a special Exhibition in Venice on the subject of the 50th anniversary of the Biennale; this took place as the Italian army was readying itself to invade Ethiopia in the teeth of opposition from the League of Nations, which imposed sanctions on Italy. Greece took no official part in the Exhibition[35], and played a leading role both in having the League of Nations vote for the sanctions and in implementing them[36].
In 1936, with the restoration of the monarchy, it appeared for a short time as if the conservative faction was going to triumph. The members of the Art Group did not take part in that year’s Biennale, and so the Greek pavilion was dominated by the works of Vikatos, Argyros, Thomopoulos, Zairis, Cosmadopoulos and other scions of the Munich School or timid impressionists who were pupils of the Grande Chaumiere[37]. The Biennale committee was chaired by Crown Prince Paul, and, as we are told by the exhibition catalogue, “Prince Nicholas was pleased to send some of his own works”[38]. Some informal settlement may have been reached, since in the same year the Greek artists who took part in the official exhibition in Sofia were all members of the Art Group[39].  This exhibition, held under the auspices of Popov, the Bulgarian Minister of Education, was organised so as to demonstrate “the distance which had been traveled between the regrettable past and the excellent results which we see today as G. Radev[40] stated at the opening ceremony, in reference to the recent friction between Bulgaria and Greece caused by the Balkan Wars and also by Bulgarian opposition to the Balkan Pact which Greece has succeeded in having signed in 1934[41].
In the following year, Greece took part in the Paris[42] International Exposition, where, apart from Vikatos, the exhibitors included painters who had studied in Paris end represented modernism in the Greece of the time. Artists such as Parthenis, Galanis, Gounaropoulos, Apartis, Ghikas, Vasileiou, Tombros, Theodoropoulos and Asteriadis made up the avant- fared in the visual inquiries of Greek artists[43].
The reorganising role of the Metaxas dictatorship, connected with its policy of reorganising the Venizelist machinery of state, had far- reaching consequences for the Greek participation in the Venice Biennale[44].
The way in which the Fascist state absorbed intellectuals has already been noted by commentators on this period[45], and, of course, attention has been drawn to the presence of Pantelis Prevelakis in the Directorate of Fine Arts of the Ministry of Education[46]. Prevelakis, who had failed to be elected Professor of Art History at the University of Thessaloniki, used his position in the Ministry in order to have him self elected to a post position in the School of Fine Arts[47]. However, his activities in the Ministry were beneficial to the visual arts. In May 1937, the government had issued a law without precedent or successor in Greece, “concerning the formation of a Standing Committee for the Venice International Art Exhibition”. The first article of this law fixed the number of members of the committee at five, and determined the capacity of each: “a) a distinguished art-lover; b) the Director of fine Arts of the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Education; c) the Director of the School of Fine Arts; d) the Director of the National Gallery, and e) a painter recommended by the Federation of recognised art organisations in Greece”[48].
The revitalising and modernising intervention of the liberals now acted through the formal bureaucratic structure which they had introduced, since they were in the majority on the Standing Committee. The selectors for the 1938 Biennale, the first at which Greece was respectably represented – by Parthenis, Tombros and Theodoropoulos[49] – were Zacharias Papantoniou, Dimitriadis, Benakis, Prevelakis and Kostas Pangalos. In 1940, almost the same committee (with A. Stratigos in the place of Papantoniou) selected A. Asteriadis, M Vitsoris, I. Mitarakis and P. Rodokanakis in painting, B. Raftopoulou, K.Papachristopoulos and G. Zongolopoulos in sculpture, and D. Yanoukakis, A. Koroyannakis and E. Papadimitriou in engraving[50]. In an article in the periodical Nea Estia, Prevelakis wrote of the Greek exhibitors, “the three artists who are showing their works this year are of particular interest to the art historian in that all three find themselves under the auspices of modernism. They are modernists in the sense that, having escaped from the Munich School, whose tradition they played a part in severing… they  have turned in the direction of the achievements of contemporary Western art…”[51]. In 1938, Franco’s Spain managed to reply to the triumph scored by Guernica in Paris a year before by winning the Venice Biennale prize with Ignacio Zuluaga, thus disappointing the Greeks, who had hoped that Parthenis would distinguish himself. In 1940, the Greeks went to Venice under the dark shadow of impending war[52].
However, it is easy to discern in the choices of artists made for 1938 and 1940 that the battle between Academists and Modernists which was raging in Athens at the time was very clearly turning in favour of the later, with state intervention[53]. A closer look will reveal, behind the selection for 1940, the dynamic rise of a new generation of artists who in painting, under the influence of Galanis, had been led to the chiaroscuro of the palette of Derain, and in Sculpture, influenced by Dimitriadis, Tombros and Apartis, in the direction of the students of Rodin: Bourdelle, Despiau and Maillol.
In a survey conducted by the newspaper Imerision Kirix, young students such as Yannis Moralis stated “their preference for the Classical artists of the Renaissance”[54], and their inclination in the direction of Oumvertos Argyros’ studio should be comprehended in this more general atmosphere then predominant in Western Europe[55]. The advice and warning issued by Christian Zervos was heeded only insofar as the “formalism” of abstract art was concerned: “above all, avoid guiding Greek artists in the direction of imitation and towards the West. Teach them the profound principles which govern the art of the West, but prevent them from confining them selves to the formalism of that art. The Greeks ought to be inspired, above all, by the great principles of the ancients – that is grandeur of conception, profundity of thought, and perfection of execution”[56]. But the West was inevitably a model for Greece, and the question was, which of the Western models would be assimilated.
As we look at the work of young artists of the period – Iliadis, Moralis, Spyropoulos, Malamos, Kontopoulos, Kanellis, Rengos, Nikolaou, Frantziskakis, Tsarouchis, Almaliotis, Vasilikiotis, and others – we can see clearly the powerful influence and the atmosphere of “la sobrieté et la mesure” which Apollinaire detected in Derain. The situation was much the same in sculpture. Like their contemporaries in painting, Kapralos, Papas, Papachristopoulos, Raftopoulos, Falireas, Ferentinis, Zongolopoulos, Makris, Loukopoulos, Perantinos, Lameras and others worked within the Parisian spirit which was more familiar and “classic” for them, displaying little interest in the work of Zadkine, Moore, Archipenko or Brancusi, with the exception of one aspect of the multi-faceted work of Tombros. It was only in engraving that the woodcuts of Yorgos Economidis demonstrated that Expressionism was not entirely unknown in Greece before the arrival of Bouzianis.
By this time, there can be no doubt that modern Greek art looked to Paris for schooling and as a measure of comparison, and its complete harmonisation with Parisian concerns prevented artists such as Spyros Papaloukas[57], Fotis Kontoglou or Yorgos Bouzianis – clearly much more mature than their contemporaries – from taking part in the major exhibitions abroad and, of course, ensured that they were barred from the School of Fine Arts. The essential criterion was not quality, or authenticity, or even modernism, but synchronisation[58]. The inter-War period in Greece was not just one in which innovators and conservatives clashed, or in which there was a complete and final shift from Munich to Paris: it was also the period in which abstract art was rejected and the avant–garde was surpassed without any experience being gained from it. The debate over the work of Steris shows that, in effect, only Dimitris Pikionis was capable of comprehending Derain and denouncing him as bringing an age to an end[59]. It also demonstrated that the modernising trend of the early years of the century, as expressed by the pen of Papantoniou, was already obsolete. Papantoniou represented the spirit of pure rationalism, of the Enlightenment: he was rigorous, concise, exact, absolute and transparently clear[60]. His interlocuters were not capable of putting together a uniform point of view, but they reveal the break–down of bourgeois thought, of positivism, into a series of opposites and derivatives, with idealism, Marxism, Hellenocentrism, internationalism, objectivism, subjectivism, mysticism and scientism allying themselves – often in the thought of the same author – against the art critic, going very clearly beyond the virtues of Steris’ work if not his intentions[61]. In fact, the avant-garde periodical Trito Mati (“Third Eye”) was unrivalled in the inter-War period and the only artistic manifestoes to be issued were those of the academist painters and the young realists[62]. Kontoglou had already begun to publish fiery articles attacking the “ultra-modernists”[63], as the ideology of “Greekness” which was to become predominant after the War gained greater and greater maturity. Thus, be the late 1930s, when Ghikas and Diamantopoulos had abandoned their initial investigations into the abstract and Steris had departed to seek his fortune in the USA, only Theotokas’ fictional hero Leonis was left in Greece with the wish “to give himself up completely to the magic of colours, to swim through the colours at random, regardless of the outcome; for him, and only for him, the question was one of stirring the colours up together, letting them dance, and wander as the chose, until they came together in a colour composition like beautiful music, a game for the eye which represented nothing, just as music represents nothing[64].

Evgenios D. Matthiopoulos 

Associate Professor of Art History
Department of History and Archaeology, University of Crete

Ευγένιος Δ. Ματθιόπουλος 

Αναπληρωτής καθηγητής ιστορίας της τέχνης
Τμήμα Ιστορίας – Αρχαιολογίας, Πανεπιστήμιο Κρήτης