Exhibition opening tomorrow “Museum of the City of Athens – Vouros-Eutaxia Foundation” in honor of the artist George Vakirtzis. But he also honors cinema, the art that gave Vakirtzis the material to reveal all his skills in his famous giant advertising posters, which for at least two decades “dressed” the facades of the capital’s cinemas.

The exhibition titled “When George Vakirtzis Painted for the Attikon Cinema” presents the Starlet Friends collection at a special moment, as this year marks the centenary of the artist’s birth, and on the other hand, a decade has passed. currently completed as Attikon, one of the city’s historic cinemas, remains closed pending new use.

Talk to him Christos F. Margaritis, from the organizers of the Starlet team, we understand that this particular collection is the fruit of love and dedication. It was created by lovers of the Seventh Art who wanted to preserve and document the giant movie posters, not only as works of visual value, but also as witnesses to a bygone era and a method of work that has now disappeared.

Starting with purely cinematic material, the posters themselves, they were addressed to the creators, and then to the distributors and owners of cinemas. They also visited famous photography studios in Athens, where they found important “evidence of the work” of the artists. “Greek cinema posters, designed by artists such as Stefanos Almaliotis and Giorgos Vakirtzis, are the prehistory of visual communication in our country, at least as far as the field of culture is concerned, together with minimal theater posters.” , the designer comments Dimitris T. Arvanitismember of Alliance Graphic Internationale.

Stefanos Almaliotis was the founder of the so-called “Athenian School of Decor” in the 1930s, and Vakirtzis was his student. Two years earlier, he had worked as an assistant to the Turk Kiamil Nur in Kokkinia, whose workshop made signs, signs for shops, decorations for the circus, fairs, scenery for traveling troupes, as well as lime advertising on the walls. Together with Kiamil, he made the first advertisement for Kokkinia’s cinemas on square meters of paper with paints mixed with fish glue. Impressed by the banners of the cinemas “Orpheus” and “Kronos” (later “Kotopulis”) in the center of Athens, he learned that these were the works of Almaliotis. So in 1938, at only 15 years old, he became an assistant in his workshop.

“Greek film posters are the prehistory of visual communication in our country,” says Dimitris T. Arvanitis.

There he was taught decoupage techniques and construction secrets by carpenters, signboards and artists. He learned how to create compositions from photographs, how to make paper substrates on boxes of various shapes and very large sizes, and how quickly he learned to transfer a drawing. Vakirtzis’ education was supplemented by studies at the School of Fine Arts, and then he was hired by the film distribution company Spyros D. Skouras to develop the company’s promotional materials. In 1948, he organized his own workshop in the yard behind Attikon.

photographic material

Each new task began with the so-called “documents”, that is, photographic materials that the workshop received from film distributors. For the giant posters, these materials were usually delivered on Friday afternoon so that they could be prepared and posted on Sunday evening. “The first films that were advertised were in black and white, so the artist had to turn the neutral color informational material into a magnet,” explains art critic Irini Oratis. “The buildings bordering the cinema and the atmosphere of the city provided a natural context for his compositions.”

The experience that Vakirtzis had in choosing the photograph with the greatest interest and the strongest impression provided him with the basis of composition. Additional compositions framing the main figures very often gave the feeling of the film, but rarely illustrated anything specific.

“Vakirtzis saw himself first and foremost as an artisan,” Ms. Orati comments. “The giant poster was a popular genre that required hard work, quick decisions, and until then it was based on the experience of the artist. Vakirtzis turned it into a kind of social fresco that gave birth to a unique “school”, the course of which was abruptly interrupted by the crisis of cinemas in Greece in the 70s.

Information for the report was taken from the album “Forthcoming” (Itanos publishing house). The duration of the exhibition is until 04.09.