The Municipality of Heraklion and the Deputy Mayor’s Office for Culture, Volunteering and Monuments organise the art exhibition titled “The Collector’s Eye: The Sotiris Felios Collection” in collaboration with “The other Arcadia” Foundation.

The current exhibition includes a representative selection of 111 works by 49 artists from the Sotiris Felios Collection, both paintings and sculptures, created in the period between 1988 and 2018 with the exception of two older works, one by Takis (1954) and the other by Nikos Engonopoulos (1975). The works of art allow the public to appraise different approaches on the same subject by three generations of Greek artists and to explore the creative and personal language of each and every one of them.

Aristea Plevri, Vice-Mayor for Culture & Volunteerism, notes in the catalogue: “Contemporary art creation in Greece has found a home, as well as a showcase, in ‘The other Arcadia’ Foundation, which was inspired and created by Sotiris Felios. Important Greek artists, painters and sculptors, are included in this preeminent collection. It is with great pleasure, therefore, that the Municipality of Heraklion welcomes a large part of it at the historical venue of St Mark’s Basilica”.

Exhibition curator Louisa Karapidaki explains: “The exhibition is divided into three big thematic units, each with subsections, which corroborate effectively the exhibition’s narrative. The works in the first unit express the unreserved side of the personality of their artists, as this is illustrated in their self-portraits. Instead, the works in the second unit demonstrate, in a sense, the inner qualities of their artists, their spiritual and innermost quests, their sophistication and education. Painters and sculptors alike illustrate the meaning of sanctity sacré, represent scenes from greek mythology and depict their favorite characters from the realms of literature, art or sports.

The third unit is dedicated to images of the outward appearance of reality, be it depictions of the human body and face or of the human presence in the modern urban environment.

In this exhibition we attempted to incorporate a great number of works of art (111 works by 49 Greek artists), in order to present interesting approaches to popular themes in contemporary Greek art, as selected and compiled by the collector himself.”

Artists:

Io Angeli / Daphne Angelidou / Manolis Anastasakos / Kalliopi Asargiotaki / Yiorgos Avgeros / Xenofon Bitsikas / Emmanouil Bitsakis / Christos Bokoros / Chronis Botsoglou / Pantelis Chandris / Antonis Choudalakis / Leda Contogiannopoulou / Stefanos Daskalakis / Nikos Engonopoulos / Maria Filopoulou / Maria Giannakaki / Stratigoula Giannicopoulou / Dimitris Hantzopoulos / Maria Hadjiandreou / Ilias Karras / Theofilos Katsipanos / Penny Konstantinou / Alexis Kyritsopoulos / Kostas Lales / George Lappas / Alecos Levidis / Aphrodite Litti / Thanassis Makris / Michalis Manoussakis / Tassos Mantzavinos / Alexia Marouli / Tassos Missouras / Yannis Moralis / Nikos Moschos / Vally Nomidou / Achilleas Papacostas / Constantinos Papamichalopoulos / Kostas Papanikolaou / Vassilis Papanikolaou / Kostas Papatriantafyllopoulos / Fanis Paraskevoudakis / Giorgos Rorris / Edouard Sacaillan / Antonis Staveris / Takis / Dimitris Tataris / Anna Maria Tsakali / Jannis Psychopedis / Marilitsa Vlachaki

Part of the Collection has been exhibited at the Benaki Museum (2002, 2009, 2018 and 2019), the Cultural Center of Nicosia (Famagusta Gate 2003), the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art (Thessaloniki 2003), the Cultural Center of Ermoupolis (Syros 2008), the Sismanoglio Megaro (Istanbul 2010), the Hellenic Institute for Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Studies in Venice (Venice, 2011), the Giorgio De Chirico Art Centre (Volos, 2012), the Vittoriano (Rome, 2012), the Annexes of the National Art Gallery in Nafplio and the Coumantaros Art Gallery of Sparta (Naflio and Sparta 2013), the 3rd International Contemporary Art Festival Re-Culture III (Skagiopoulio, Patra, 2014), the Municipal Art Gallery of Chania (Chania, Crete, 2014), and the Municipal Art Gallery of Agrinio (Agrinio 2016), while individual artworks are loaned to retrospective and group exhibitions.