Dimitris Mytaras - Juvenilia

Dimitris Mytaras - Juvenilia at the Benaki Museum, Pireos, Athens.

This exhibition covered the work of eleven Greek artists who were influenced by the major events of the 20th century: WWII, the occupation of Greece by the Germans and the famine that ensued; the Civil War that followed the end of the war, and how it divided the nation; finally the seven years of the military dictatorship that brought so much suffering to the Greek people. 

In the exhibition we were shown how each artist's work developed and changed as they matured and how some moved on to abstraction. I will cover the work of one artist in each post.

Mytaras' works were influenced from ancient Greek history and mythology, but also from Greek contemporary culture and reality. From his period of critical realism during the years of the dictatorship in Greece, he moved on to a more expressionistic phase in his painting, one which he stuck to.

Table, 1957, (oil on canvas)

Interior, 1958, (tempera, gouache, charcoal on paper)

Mirror, 1957, (ink on paper)

Harikleia, 1960, (ink on paper)
 

Woman in Profile, 1957, (ink on paper)

Elderly Woman, 1956, (ink on paper)

White Hat, 1972, (oil on burlap)

Composition with Sunglasses, 1970, (acrylic on canvas)