Greece

About

Greek art begins well before the classical age, with the pared-down marble figures of the Cycladic islands in the 3rd millennium BC and the painted palace walls of Minoan Knossos. Archaic sculptors carved stiff, smiling kouroi; by the 5th century BC their successors had mastered a relaxed stance that Rome and the Renaissance would imitate. Praxiteles made marble seem to breathe.

In the Byzantine centuries, mosaic and icon painting flourished at monasteries such as Hosios Loukas, and Cretan icon painters trained Domenikos Theotokopoulos before he left for Italy and Spain as El Greco. In the 1930s Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika and Yannis Tsarouchis sought a modern art rooted in Greek light and tradition. Several postwar artists worked abroad: Jannis Kounellis in Rome with Arte Povera, Chryssa with neon in New York, and Takis with magnets in Paris. Alekos Fassianos painted flat, stylised figures drawn from Greek daily life.