Thoughts for the exhibition in Constantinople
Constantinople had always been part of the Greek Culture. The current General Consul, Mr Vasilis Bornovas, had opened since last year the consular residence on the bustling Great street of Peran which connects Taksim with Galatas, essentially opening a pole for Hellenism in the city’s center. Currently, at the Simanoglio Mansion operates the single Greek School in Turkey where the Ancient and the contemporary Greek civilization is presented. As for us, for many years we have been anxious to appear European, cosmopolitan and multicultural and eventually indifferent. At Constantinople though we expose ourselves in a friendly mood especially without the subservient agony of assimilation. The exhibition Contemporary Greek Painting exhibits some of the best works of the Sotiris Felios collection. From Moralis, the last of the Hellenism of the ’30s, and Botsoglou of the Modern Greek realists of the’ 60s, to the last resurrection of the documentary painting of the ’90s. And let us not forget that the idolatrous tradition of Greek culture, which eroded the strong refusal of the East to represent the face of man as an image of God, there, in Constantinople, was erected, after a long bloodshed, and preserved the spirit of art, which allowed the Western civilization to be reborn and flourish as the pre-eminent civilization of the image.
