Global Greece: Onassis Cultural Foundation Hosts El Greco Art Exhibition in New York Until February 27, 2010

The Adoration of the Shepherds, El Greco

 

The Onassis Foundation (USA) is currently hosting an exhibition

THE ORIGINS OF EL GRECO:

ICON PAINTING IN VENETIAN CRETE



through February 27, 2010 

 with early works by El Greco.

Don't miss this fascinating exhibition  at 

The Onassis Cultural Center, New York

Monday through Saturday 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

Entrance on 51st or 52nd Street between 5th and Madison Avenues

For more information, Click Here 

El Greco was born Domenikos Theotokopoulos in 1541 in Crete, at that time part of the Republic of Venice, and the centre of Post-Byzantine art. He trained and became a master within that tradition before travelling at age 26 to Venice, as other Greek artists had done. In 1570 he moved to Rome, where he opened a workshop and executed a series of works. During his stay in Italy, El Greco enriched his style with elements of Mannerism and of the Venetian Renaissance. In 1577 he moved to Toledo, Spain, where he lived and worked until his death. In Toledo, El Greco received several major commissions and produced his best known paintings.  To read more about El Greco, Click Here





A review of this unique exhibition by Mary Tomkins Lewis for the Wall Street Journal gives us valuable background to the artist, and the Crete of those years:

  "The Origins of El Greco: Icon Painting in Venetian Crete," at the Onassis Cultural Center in New York, explores the roots of El Greco's fascinating and multifaceted art without diminishing his brilliant transformation from a highly successful icon painter in Candia (now Heraklion), the capital city of Crete, as he became an artist of late Renaissance Venice and Rome, and then the profoundly unorthodox Mannerist in Spain whom we know best. The island of Crete, a historic crossroads for maritime commerce and a matrix for cultural exchange, vividly shaped El Greco's peripatetic life and the striking originality reflected in all of his painting.

In 1211, just after the Fourth Crusade, Crete became a Venetian territory, and its vibrant pictorial tradition soon mirrored its new, multicultural society. With a diverse clientele that stretched from Venice to the Dalmatian coast and the Balkans, Cretan painters quickly acquired the stylistic dexterity their historical circumstances now demanded. They conflated Byzantine and late Gothic elements in icons they produced en masse, and signed them in Latin as befitting their international audience.

 

In the decades leading up to the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, a period in which many of that beleaguered city's painters migrated to the more peaceful climate of Crete, the quality of the island's art increased significantly. The balanced compositions, classically proportioned figures and noble sentiments of these new, Palaiologan models, known as works alla greca, erased any lingering provincial traits, and often incorporated elements of early Italian Renaissance painting. 



A superb example of this graceful hybrid genre is the late-15th-century panel of "Christ and the Woman of Samaria," cautiously attributed in the scholarly exhibition catalog to Nikolas Tzafouris (c. 1455-1500), a painter renowned for his mastery of several manners as well as his miniaturist technique. Its stylized, rocky bluffs are typical of Byzantine landscapes and hold an episodic, New Testament narrative that is found on the walls of many Greek monasteries, but these are framed with views of cities, grassy hills and brilliant blue skies borrowed from 14th-century Tuscany. 

As Anastasia Drandaki, of the Benaki Museum in Athens, and the curator of this exhibition, says, El Greco arrived on the main stage of European painting through the gateways that had opened for him in Crete, and his art remained redolent of the island's resonant history and pictorial culture...

To read the full article by Ms Lewis, Teacher in Art History at Trinity College, Hartford, in the Wall Street Journal , Click Here

To view a slideshow from the WSJ of the Icons on display, Click here  

Golden Global Greek Aristotle Onassis' Private Greek Island Skorpios - FOR SALE?

According to reports in the British and Greek Press today, Skorpios, the magnificent private island getaway in the Ionian Sea made famous by Greek Tycoon, Aristotle Onassis, has been put up for sale by the sole heir to his legend and legacy, Athena Onassis.

Skorpios, the island of legendary international jet set glamour, the island where Onassis stunned the world and especially Maria Callas, on October 30, 1968 when he married President John F Kennedy's widow, Jacqueline Kennedy, is also Onassis' final resting place along with that of his children, Alexander and Athena's mother, Christina.

Among those who have written about the rumored sale is writer Alexis Mantheakis, former press spokesman, adviser and friend to Athena's family. He writes in his Greek Political Issues blog that

Athina maintains Scorpios in pristine condition with an army of gardeners, servants, sailors and mechanics at a cost of around 1.5 million USD per annum, but never visits the island and is not known to have been to the family tombs there to light a candle or to say a prayer for her mother Christina, her uncle Alexander who died in a plane crash at 24, nor for her granddad who made her and Doda's present jet setting lifestyle possible.

Her mother and family rest quietly in the silence of the tiny island chapel of Panagitsa encased in milk-white Pendelian marble tombs. Only the weekly visits of a cleaning woman who comes to change the flowers in the chapel and to light a candle at each of the four tombs disturbs the serenity of the last Onassis resting site.The cost of maintaining Scorpios, the reluctance of the heiress and her husband to visit Greece and the family island, and her past liquidation of hallmark Onassis properties and valuables indicates that it would only be a matter of time before Athina put Scorpios on the block. The Sunday Express report indicates that the time for this too may have come.

The last link of Athena (the correct spelling of her name) - Helene Roussel de Miranda Onassis to her Onassis heritage may be about to be severed. But there is always a twist in the Onassis legend. Athina is only 24 years old, very early in the game for anyone to predict the future of any of the Onassis women who historically have proved to be notoriously unpredictable. Time will tell, but Scorpios or no Scorpios, the last surviving descendant of the fabled dynasty may prove everybody wrong in the end. (To read entire article - click here)

We don't know if the rumours are true, as there have been many similar ones before, including one reported by the Daily Telegraph in May of 2004. We hope that it is not true and that Athena does not want to sever every bond that ties her to the Onassis legacy. We would like to think that she would be proud of her family and the legacy her grandfather and mother left.However, it is her inheritance and if she feels that she will gain real happiness by getting rid of the Onassis Legacy Baggage as it were, and which she may consider as an oppressive burden, then who are we to stop her?The legacy is hers and she can dispose of it as she wants. Athena has had enough tragedy in her young life. We in the Global Greek World can only wish her luck and happiness and hope that she can get on with her life in the way she wants to live it, far from the eyes of a voracious world press.

If the rumours do prove to be true this time, may we respectfully suggest to the Board of the Onassis Foundation that, the right thing to do would be to buy the island in order to set it up as an Onassis Family Memorial Museum, thus ensuring it's existence as an ongoing and living tribute to it's founder, Aristotle Onassis, the man to whom the Onassis Foundation owes it's very existence.

Statue of Aristotle Onassis at Nidri Port, Lefkada

To read the Daily Express Story Click Here To read about Onassis on Wikipedia Click hereTo read about the Alexander Onassis Public Benefit Foundation Click here