A small “appraisal of life” taken from the painter’s studio is perhaps the most personal exhibition of Chronis Botsoglou at the Café of the National Archaeological Museum. The important artist and professor of the Athens School of Fine Arts is “revealed” through a series of works that date from his student years to the present. Oils, water colours and reliefs make up “pages of a diary” that record the painter and his family. He depicts his mother, his partner Eleni—from a young girl to the present day—his daughters and himself of course. Apart from his studio works, pages from his art diaries are shown to the public, with notes and early ideas presented as independent creations.
The exhibition “Painted Memories” invites visitors to “feel” Botsoglou’s “gaze” through his drawings and notes. These small pictures record his preoccupations and “moments” that sparked off larger works.
As an experiential and often self-referential painter, the artist has dived into the self over the years so as to converse with the other. He says that “I cannot do anything other than begin again from myself”. Then elsewhere that “Our body is a house. The artist must make a road out of his house”. “Painted Memories” deals with the function of memory which, as the artist says “is the privilege of old age. I am now old, so I have this privilege”.
The exhibition is curated by the art historian George Mylonas.
It opened on Wednesday, June 20 at 18:00 and runs till September 2, 2018.
Admission to the Café is free.