Municipal Art Gallery of Nikaia-Renti

The Municipal Art Gallery of Nikaia-Renti was established in November 2015. It was housed on three floors of a privately owned building that was donated to the Municipality of Nikaia-Renti. The premises, with a total area of approximately 500 square metres, were renovated and equipped to house most of the municipal art collection. At the same time, a number of works, mainly by Greeks but also by foreign artists, the most important of which is the etching triptych Detail of the Civil War (Epitaph) by Tassos Alevizos, are exhibited in the Events Hall of the city's Town Hall. The collection was founded in 1976 by donations from Greek artists who responded to the initiative of Dino Katsafana, the first mayor of Nikaia during the period of regime change, with the aim of promoting the cultural development of the city. Important experienced artists, as well as younger painters and engravers, donated oil paintings, compositions in light materials and engravings, so that a considerable number of works of art were gathered in the newly established municipal collection. The initial call by the city authorities was answered mainly by artists who had experience of collective activity through their participation in artistic groups and, at the same time, had adopted a social approach to art. The eldest among them, such as Aginoras Asteriadis, Spyros Vassiliou, Ilias Fertis, Dimitris Megalidis and Diamantis Diamantopoulos, had experienced the German occupation and in one way or another maintained a resistance status, which linked them to the action of Nikaia (the Kokkinia Refugee) at the same period. Several of them, including Polykleitos Regos, Celeste Polychroniadis and Yiannis Gaitis, were members of one or more of the most important old artistic groups: the Art Group (1930), the Free Artists, the "Stathmi" (Level) or the "Akraioi" (Extremists). Among the younger artists who responded to the municipal call were members of the Centre for Fine Arts, the Group for Communication and Education in Art, and artists from the 'Hora' circle. Panagiotis Gravvalos, Lefteris Kanakakis, George Milios, Sotiris Sorogas, Cleopatra Digka and Asadour Baharian was among them. Substantial sporadic donations were made in the following years and continue to this day. Thanks to them, works by Orestis Kanellis, Lykourgos Kogevinas, Andreas Vourloumis and Yiannis Pappas (a colour drawing) were acquired, as well as a significant number of drawings and engravings, scrapbooks, luxury editions with original engravings and books of modern Greek engraving, donated by the researcher and historian of modern Greek engraving, author and publisher Nikos Grigorakis. Finally, a significant expansion of the original core became possible in 2011, thanks to the merger of the Municipalities of Nikaia and Agios Ioannis Rentis. The contemporary art collection of the Municipality of Agios Ioannis Rentis was added to the art collection of the Municipal Gallery, which is the result of the active art policy promoted in the early 2000s under the mayoralty of Giorgos Ioakeimidis and the artistic direction of the sculptor Nikos Tziotis. This section organically completes the overview of the progress of Greek art up to the present day. It consists of works by Jason Molfesis, Pavlos Dionysopoulos, Nikos Kessanlis, Chrysa Romanou, Michalis Katzourakis, Giorgos Lazokas, Thanasis Totsikas, Eozen Agopian and Nikos Tranos. A separate chapter of the Municipal Art Collection are the engravings of the Open Engraving Workshop of the Municipality of Nikaia - St. I. Rentis, which operates in collaboration with the Greek Chamber of Fine Arts. They are works by professional engravers and painters, created in the Open Engraving Workshop with the equipment available to the creators. The works, which are part of larger engraving units, are donated by the artists to the Municipality of Nikaia-Renti. Selections from the ever-growing collection of contemporary prints are exhibited in the Municipal Gallery and are regularly updated.