The love of art is learned through tender nails. From exhibitions, museum visits, publications, attitudes are formed that subsequently determine our entire aesthetics: from how we dress, decorate our home and treat public space in general, to how we think and philosophize about life. Therefore, it is important when the school itself, in addition to its curriculum, provides students with aesthetic education. This is the case of Greek-German education, which has systematically approached this area over the years with many exhibitions of Greek artists – individual and group – with the aim of enriching the incentives of the children attending the school. Very often, these tributes are accompanied by special talks with the creators themselves, such as recently the sculptor Aphrodite Liti or the photographer Panos Kokkinias, who told the children about their work.

Last night, another important tribute was inaugurated on the school grounds. It is called “Shadows” and aims to introduce students to one of the most charismatic Greek artists, Nikos Kessanlis. In total, there are eight works from the section “Imaginations of Identity”, the most characteristic of his work. He introduced it for the first time in the 1960s, influenced by the mec art (mechanical art) movement. The series presented at the exhibition was created simultaneously with the creation of the artist’s large work “Queue” at the metro station in Omonia. The construction technique of this installation was a “frame” fabric with several layers, with the last layer being a sensitized photochromic paint capable of capturing shapes and forms with the classical method of photography. This is how figurines come to life before the eyes of passers-by, which have become especially dear to us over the past two decades.

An artist who left a heavy mark on Greek art, because he refuted many previous facts, Kessanlis condenses the whole world in his work. Born in 1930 in Athens, studied at ASKT, then lived in Rome and Paris, where he faced international challenges. He actively participated in the spirit of the times, in the spirit of breaking with traditional painting. Thus was born the art of mec, of which he was one of the founders. His work expanded the field of painting by introducing the mechanical, the accidental, the spontaneous, but also the traditional, with references to Eastern shadow theatre. Phantasmagoria of identity depict different shadows, so to speak, versions of ourselves that highlight the complexity of human existence. The exhibition will run until April 12.