Twentieth-Century Greek Cypriot Art: An “Other” Modernism on the Periphery

Abstract

Twentieth-century Cypriot art, from its emergence within the conditions of colonialism to its flowering in the post-independence era, constitutes a case of an "other" modernism on the periphery. It was a "site-specific" modernism that responded to particularities of Cyprus's experience of modernity. With regard to Greek Cypriot artists in particular, these responses included a varied negotiation of tradition as well as of modern art as part of both the need to define a collective identity for the colonial moment and the process of achieving a post-colonial present and future. The works of Adamantios Diamantis, Georghios Pol. Georghiou, and Christoforos Savva-three of the most prominent modern Cypriot artists-constitute important episodes in the course of Cypriot modernity, especially in the middle decades of the century. Taken together, their artistic oeuvres chart the trajectory of Greek Cypriot modernism in the pre-1974 era, the mapping of which contributes to the discourse of "alternative" instances in the history of modern art.

Queering the soil: Reimagining landscape and identity in queer artistic practices in Cyprus

“…to inflect his modernism with ideological references to the Hellenic heritage and national identity of the island during colonial times (Danos 2014). They also suggest the transformation of the peasant-woman into a symbol of Cyprus, during the intercommunal clashes in the post-independence period (Danos 2014).…”

“…to inflect his modernism with ideological references to the Hellenic heritage and national identity of the island during colonial times (Danos 2014). They also suggest the transformation of the peasant-woman into a symbol of Cyprus, during the intercommunal clashes in the post-independence period (Danos 2014). When examining, however, the longer history of the visual encoding of Cypriot women as peasants to symbolise the island's cultural identit y, what becomes apparent is the correspondence of such imaginings with the colonial gaze and its gendered stereotypes.…”