National Gallery-Museum of Alexandros Soutsos

National Gallery-Museum of Alexandros Soutsos

Located in the centre of Athens, the National Gallery is a major attraction for visitors, both locals and tourists, as well as art students. Besides its central building in Athens, the National Gallery-Museum of Alexandros Soutsos comprises the National Glyptotheque in Goudi, the Institute of Contemporary Greek Art and annexes in Sparta (Koumantareios Gallery), Corfu, Nafplio and Aegina (Kapralos Museum). It is a proposal for those who want to get to know the modern Greek history through the works of famous artists. The first collections came from the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) and the University of Athens. Important donations were added soon after. Today, the National Gallery’s collection includes more than 20,000 works of painting, sculpture, engraving and other forms of art, and is the treasury of recent Greek artistic creation, covering a period from the post-Byzantine period to the present day. It also has a remarkable collection of Western European paintings.

In 1954, the National Gallery was merged with the Alexandros Soutsos Estate, hence its double name. The jurist and art lover Alexandros Soutsos bequeathed his collection and property to the state with the aim of creating a “Museum of Fine Arts”. The collection includes paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings and installations. Throughout the war, the Gallery’s treasures remained hidden in the Archaeological Museum. The Permanent Exhibition of Modern Greek Art is divided into thematic sections: Post-Byzantine Art – Cretan School, The School of the Ionian Islands, Domenicos Theotokopoulos, The Painting of the Independent Greek State the years of the Reign of King Othon, the Bourgeois Class and its Painters, Around 1900, Modernism & Tradition, From Surface into Space, European Painting, Greek Interwar Printmaking – Teachers, Disciples, Successors and Modern Greek Prints.