Some Remarks on Kontoglou

Fotis Kontoglou (1896-1965) was an artist, writer, and “agiographos” whose work and combative personality exerted unequalled influence on the evolution of Greek ecclesiastical art in the twentieth century.  A native of the coastal city of Aïvalí (Kydoníes) in Asia Minor, he lived through, and resolved creatively, the cultural conflicts to which the Greek nation was subjected by the “Asia Minor catastrophe” of  1922 and the tide of refugees that it created, of whom he was one.  Kontoglou single-handedly overcame daunting odds to restore the quasi-canonical status of the Byzantine aesthetic tradition in Greek Orthodoxy.  The mere fact of his success is remarkable, but no less interesting is the genesis of the ideas informing his project.  His early life in “Rum,” his displacement to “Hellas,” and his exposure to “Frankish” culture and ideologies during an early sojourn in Spain and France all contributed to the fashioning of his mature outlook and may also help to explain why he succeeded in creating a supra-individual religious imagery when his European counterparts did not.  This talk will seek to answer this final question