Ο Νίκος Χατζηκυριάκος-Γκίκας και η Γενιά του Μεσοπολέμου

Abstract

Since 20th May 2012 the building at 3 Kriezotou Street, bequeathed to the Benaki Museum by Nikos Hadjikyriakos- Ghika (1906-1994), has housed a new museum annexe, which not only honours the acclaimed painter himself, but also the art and culture of the interwar generation. Half the fourth floor, the fifth and a large part of the sixth floor of this building houses a permanent exhibition made up of certain parts of the Hadjikyriakos-Ghika residence: his study, the reception rooms, the dining room, his personal collections, a display of his works, the studio where he worked and received his friends and admirers. The first gallery on the raised ground floor displays the precious gift from Litsa Papaspyrou, in memory of her father Gustave Boissière, which contains rare furniture, ornaments and paintings by French Post-Impressionist painters. It is a unique collection in Greece, which recreates something of the cultural climate of early twentiethcentury Paris.
All the rooms in between record cultural and artistic activities in Greece in the period between the end of the First World War and the Asia Minor Disaster in 1922 right up to the eve of the 1967 coup. A number of the branches of the arts and what are known as the Humanities are represented: philology, philosophy and history, archaeology, Byzantine Studies and aesthetics, poetry, literature and drama, sculpture, painting and engraving, music, dance, architecture and the art of photography.

These aspects of Modern Greek creativity are presented as parts of a single, indivisible entity like dialects in a shared language. This is how the display was constructed and got its dialectical structure, in which the primacy of history is the continuous thread that runs through it and ensures its internal coherence—with politics being conspicuously absent. The ideas that emerged, bore fruit and were defended in difficult times (albeit no more difficult than today) nurtured those basic components of the Greek people’s self-knowledge and self-determination of which they can be justly proud. The dating criterion used in selecting creative spirits from the interwar generation was that they should have been born between 1887 and 1924 (with the exception of Panayiotis Tetsis, who was born in 1925). Together the well-known or virtually unknown figures that accompany visitors on this narrative journey orchestrate a fascinating polyphonic composition in major keys with alternating tonal intervals and percussive rhythms.

Their works, whether hung on the walls or set down in any other available space, but for the most part arranged in display cases, are supplemented by informative labels with comments and extensive explanations, brief biographies and photographic portraits, snapshots of their lives and the relationships they had with one another. The huge volume of evidence that documents and annotates the views of our intellectual and artistic world ultimately recreates the cultural environment of a crucial period. More than 2,000 exhibits, paintings and sculptures, rare manuscripts and personal notes, as well as rare first editions along with many telling heirlooms and mementoes remind us just how much a large number of undoubtedly inspired people have given our country.

However, it would have been impossible to gather all this material, which documents more than 200 case studies and ensures a smooth, logical progression through the exhibition, without the numerous, touchingly generous gifts of friends, acquaintances and collectors, relatives and direct descendants of those represented here.