“A painted self-portrait and at the same time his hagiology, it was for Fotis Kontoglu the fresco of his residence at 16 Viziinou Street in Kypriadou,” Dimitris Pavlopoulos, professor of art history at EKPA, tells us. The reason for our discussion was the exhibition “Fotis Kontoglu and his influence on the younger generation”, presented at the Museum of the Vassilis and Eliza Goulandris Foundation. One of its sections deals with myths and heroes in the work of the artist Aivaliotis. And perhaps the best way to see Kontoglu’s monumental painting is in the mural of his house, now on display at the National Gallery.

“He wanted to have his models in front of him, the highest peaks of art that he admired,” comments Mr. Pavlopoulos. “In this work, Kontoglu illustrates his mythology by combining elements of the Byzantine and post-Byzantine traditions into a single narrative. For him there was no break in the continuum of Greek history, and he creatively applied a specific nationalist concept.

In a typical interwar residence designed by the artist’s friend, the architect Cimon Laskaris, Kontoglu created his artistic iconography. It was September 1932. Yannis Tsarouhis wrote about his teacher’s preferences: “The idea of ​​illustrating your new home […] she occupied him from the first day he lived there. He did a lot of pencil sketches and small tests on a portable juicer. […] The name Cezanne was forbidden in this monastery. But Greco and Michelangelos were honored. To sketch, we went to libraries and copied lithographic images of travelers from the 1800s, and he often photographed the Feud Klender with a harmonica. It was nice to hear him analyze the Christ of the Beautiful Church, or some image he prefers, with Prodromos.”

As Mr. Pavlopoulos mentions in his text about the Cypriado residence, which is included in the most comprehensive catalog of the exhibition of the Foundation, Kontoglou was helped with the painting by his father-in-law Athanasios Hadjikampouris and then young artists, students of the School of Fine Arts in Athens, Yiannis Tsarouchis and Nikos Eggonopoulos. The fresco, divided into zones, presents the faces of his favorite painters (Pancelenos, Theophanes, Theotokopoulos, etc.), poets (Homer), philosophers (Pythagoras, Diogenes, Plutarch), Herodotus and Strabo, images of the five tribes of the earth, but also the ancient Greeks worshiped idols. In the lower part of the fresco, a fabric hung on rings, at the foot of church frescoes, is the only element directly related to religious tradition.

“His house was a beacon in the stormy sea,” wrote Engonopoulos, “the same house that was sold for two cans of oil.

“He was a wonderful illustrator,” Yannis Tsarouhis wrote about his teacher Fotis Kontoglu in one of his maturity texts on Byzantine art. And Eggonopoulos added, recalling his experience on Vizinos Street: “Kontoglu’s house was a beacon in a raging sea, an ark in a raging current. […] Kontoglu never asked for wealth and fame. He built this house with toil and trouble, suffering and anguish, to heap himself and his family, to guard his affairs, to receive his friends, to offer his great heart to enemies and friends approaching him, to open the sources of his knowledge, unreached, righteous and unrighteous.”

Oil paint and lime

In the autumn of 1941, in order to support his family, the artist sold his house to the shipper of the Piraeus Port Authority for a sack of flour and two cans of oil. The new owner resold it to a black motorist from Arachov, who, fearing that the house would be passed off as a museum, covered the fresco with whitewash, oil paints, and everything that came to hand. When Kontoglu saw the remains of lime near his old house, he asked to go inside. He then discovered that the fresco had been covered up.

After the Liberation, the house could be returned to the artist under the law of Themistocles Sofoulis. But the motorist was also interested, resulting in the case going down the path of justice until 1950. It was eventually returned to the family, and Kontoglu began efforts to uncover the fresco. The process using caustic potash was slow, tedious and unproductive. In 1973, after he passed away, his family restored it, systematically cleaning it up, and walled it off at the end of 1977.

The mural was featured in a retrospective exhibition of Fotis Kontoglu’s work in 1978 at the National Gallery and, thanks to financial assistance from the Goulandris family, was donated to the gallery a year later. The residence on Vizinou Street belongs to the artist’s family and is closed to the public.