June 6 2019 - September 9 2019
The exhibition presents 74 works of both teachers and students of the Workshop of Frescoes and the Technique of Portable Icons.
Mural painting as a specific subject in the application of painting was provided in the curriculum of our National School of Art as early as 1930. In 1961, the Application Workshops, as they were called then, of the A.S.F.A. were founded with the aim of the through specific training and exercises acquisition of professional competence of students, extending to the branches of the Fine Arts. Amongst the optional courses of the painting studios, the Frescoes and the Technique of Portable Icons workshop was the first one to be included.
The student and collaborator of Fotis Kontoglou, Konstantinos Georgakopoulos, took over the operational organization study of this new workshop unit of the A.S.F.A. and in 1962 was elected first Supervising Professor in the subject. The Apprenticeship in Frescoes and the Technique of Portable Icons, during the five years of study at the A.S.F.A. lasted for two years, as well as in the other application workshops. The curriculum that followed in his nine years of teaching at the A.S.F.A. (1962-1968) is in perfect harmony with the spirit established by his teacher Fotis Kontoglou, involving the return to tradition of Byzantine painting, markedly defining its course in time. During the first year of study, the program mainly referred to the technique of the portable Icon, while during the second year it focused on the technique of fresco, with parallel theoretical courses (Byzantine art history, Saint Placement, typology of Saints etc).
In 1969 K. Georgakopoulos was succeeded by Konstantinos Xinopoulos, who served as Professor at the A.S.F.A. for twenty-five years, up to 1996. A 1952 graduate of the School, student also of F. Kontoglou, studied the theology of the Icon near L. Ouspensky during his postgraduate studies in fresco through a scholarship in Paris. During his tenure he introduced the technique of Vitraux in the Studio.
In 2002, Pavlos Samios is elected Professor of the Studio, who will teach until 2015, reorganizing its infrastructure, introducing amongst other techniques, Encaustic in the School s new facilities at 256 Piraeus Street.
In 2016 Dimosthenis Avramidis is elected Professor, reforming the curriculum in the Studio from two to three years.
Since the Studio s 1960 s inception, two generations of artists have been formed by the A.S.F.A. with brilliant achievements in the field of Iconography in Greece and abroad.
The Byzantine and Christian Museum, in cooperation with the Studio of Frescoes and the Technique of Portable Icons, is inaugurating an educational and exhibitional collaboration, on the basis of which the students works produced in the Studio, will be exhibited every two years at the Museum s periodical exhibitions space.