The Hambis Municipal Printmaking Museum is delighted and honored to present two significant artists to the Cypriot public: Vasso Katraki and Dimitris Alithinos. These two individuals, though from different generations, made their mark on the twentieth century through their work.
Vasso Katraki (Aitoliko, 1909 – Athens, 1988) remains, to this day, one of the most complete and fertile figures in Greek art. Her entire body of work, honored with international awards and distinctions (including at the Venice Biennale), reveals the ethical values and universal spirit of her creation through the expressive power of her formal and sculptural explorations. In her works, with the austerity and deeply refined simplicity of their form and their emblematic, archetypal figures, she focuses on humanity through the evocative contrast of black and white. Her completely original transition from the traditional technique of woodcut to engraving on stone granted her unprecedented possibilities.
The work of Dimitris Alithinos (Athens, 1945) was shaped by the international climate of social and artistic revolutions of the 1960s, as well as the activist and challenging artistic practices of the following decade. In Athens, he presented works like An Incident, a profoundly political proposition-action, which was one of the first historical performances in Greece. In the First Manifesto of Arms-Craft (1978), the romantic-allegorical spirit, combativeness, and anarchic momentum converge with a belief in the value of collective assertion and the dynamic intervention of every creator in contemporary realities.
Since the early 1980s, Alithinos has expanded into intercultural and interreligious explorations. The universality of archetypal myths, the ritualistic act, nature, and the blending of different cultural traditions define the image of a multi-dimensional creator. His “Cachés” (Katakrýpseis) are defined as a vast network, a planetary work, both visible and simultaneously invisible—a work that spreads like a net, transcending geographical, linguistic, and political borders.
The first encounter between the two artists took place in the early 1970s, and half a century later, they meet again in a joint exhibition. The political dimension of their art, as well as their spirit of opposition against all forms of oppressive mechanisms of power, are the points of convergence for these two visual artists, despite their vastly different expressive methods and careers. The exhibition emerged from Alithinos’ desire to “coexist” with Vasso—a desire stemming from deep love and appreciation for the woman, the creator, and the fighter.
