The axes of the National Gallery’s programme for the coming year are: the exploitation, documentation and exhibition promotion of the permanent collection the organisation of individual and group exhibitions the deepening and expansion of the educational programme with the aim of developing critical reflection the expansion of extroversion and the further strengthening of the National Gallery’s position in Greece and abroad.

The presentation of the artistic programme was made by the Director of the National Gallery – Alexandros Soutsos Museum, Syrago Tsiara, in the presence of the Minister of Culture, Lina Mendoni.

Artistic programme for the period 2024-2025

Francisco Goya, Los Caprichos – Permanent Collection

Eighty prints, including etchings on paper and aquatints from 1797–98, will be showcased in a significant exhibition, accompanied by photographs of the preparatory drawings. This is Goya’s first print series and the only one published during his lifetime. The series, in the National Gallery Collection, was printed in 1803 and acquired in 1962 during Marinos Kalligas’s tenure as director.

The series of 80 prints titled Los Caprichos, or The Caprices, published by Francisco Goya in early 1799, marks a significant turning point in the artist’s creative journey. For the first time, the official painter of the Spanish Court allows himself the freedom to express a revolutionary, mature style, unbound by the limitations of public commissions.

Through Los Caprichos, he condemns vanity, hypocrisy in human relationships, prostitution, and the ignorance and misery of common people trapped in a world of superstition and witchcraft. He also exposes the sluggishness and corruption of the conservative, obscurantist Church, which wielded the Inquisition as a tool of subjugation. With biting satire, he mocks the ignorance and greed of doctors, teachers, and judges, indirectly criticising the Crown’s authority. Goya creates fantastical depictions of witchcraft, bringing forth a creative vision that encompasses demonic dimensions – the offspring of reason’s descent into darkness.

Duration: December 2024 – September 2025 

Curated By: Katerina Tavantzi

Francisco Goya y Lucientes (Fuendetodos 1746-Bordeaux 1828)
It is nicely stretched, 1797-98 – Print 1803
Etching, burnished aquatint and burin, 21.5 x 15.1 cm From the series “Los Caprichos

The Allure of the Bizarre – Space in Between

A Survey of Greek Art 

The impact of Goya’s subversive view of the world proves remarkably resilient. It reverberates through the liberating explosion of surrealist visions and the poetic language of modernism, and continues to offer a treasure trove of visual interpretations of our relationship with the world and the beings within it. Goya’s prints are marked by the lifelike portrayal of the monstrous, the compelling absurdity of the bizarre, and the paradoxical attraction of the repulsive. Drawing on the theatricality of carnival traditions and Commedia dell’ Arte, the artist creates a novel universe defined by ambiguity and hybridity, a constant tension between the familiar and the unfamiliar. This effect arises from his masterful fusion of everyday, readily recognisable themes with incongruous, threatening, repellent, or even incomprehensible figures that, paradoxically, draw us in rather than push us away – an attraction stemming perhaps from our intuitive recognition of something deeply familiar within these unsettling images.

The group exhibition The Allure of the Bizarre includes works by ten artists who embrace and depict the bizarre, the hybrid, and the grotesque from different starting points.

Featured Artists: Angelos Antonopoulos, Celia Daskopoulou, Yannis Gaitis, Marianna Ignataki, Christophoros Katsadiotis, Dionysis Kavalieratos, Tassos Mantzavinos, Malvina Panagiotidi, Angelos Papadimitriou, Filippos Tsitsopoulos

Duration: December 2024 – September 2025 

Curated by: Syrago Tsiara

Mantzavinos Tassos
“My dynamism in sickness ends”
Oil on canvas, 2013, 150 x 130 cm
Contemporary Greek Art Institute/National Gallery Collection

Panayiotis Tetsis – Temporary Exhibitions Gallery “Anthony E.Comninos Foudnation Hall”

A Retrospective

The National Gallery of Greece is staging a major retrospective exhibition in commemoration of the centennial of Panayiotis Tetsis’s birth.

A renowned painter, engraver, educator, and academician, Tetsis additionally served as chairman of the National Gallery’s Board of Directors. He is widely acknowledged as a pivotal figure in post-war Greek art, for both his creative and educational contributions.

Contemporary and innovative, the art of Tetsis expanded a narrow perception of Greekness to become one of the most authentic bodies of the post-war generation of Greek artists. Committed to a painting of light and a keen colourist, Tetsis was an artist of unique originality.

The exhibition will feature some 110 paintings and 50 prints, selected from the artist’s extensive donation to the National Gallery, private collections, and institutional holdings.

The exhibition seeks not only to trace Panayiotis Tetsis’s creative evolution but also to showcase the distinctive perspective through which he approached his subjects, with a particular focus on his masterful use of light and colour.

Duration: April– September 2025 

Curated by: Efi Agathonikou  

Tetsis Panayiotis (Hydra 1925-Athens 2016)
The Blue Chairs II, 1975 – 1976
Oil on canvas, 138 x 88 cm
Donated by the artist

THE FARM– National Glyptotheque Permanent Collection

In modern Greek sculpture, human figures are the main subject. Animal sculpture, though less common, has been occasionally explored by certain sculptors.

The pieces on display in The Farm have been selected amongst those suited for outdoor display in terms of scale and medium. Spanning from the 1940s to the 1970s, this collection of animal and bird sculptures make up for a unique exhibition. Well-known and less familiar figures alike appear in characteristic poses, ranging from realistic to abstract forms, inviting a dialogue with the park’s fauna and visitors of all ages. Works by Bella Raftopoulou, Antonis Karachalios, Yannis Antoniadis, Nikolaos Dogoulis, and especially Frosso Efthymiadi Menegaki, introduce visitors to an exciting and relatively rare subject in sculpture. This exhibition also highlights the parallel evolution of, and transitions between, realistic and abstract representations of animals, offering a fresh perspective on artistic expression.

Opening: Spring 2025

Curated by: Tonia Giannoudaki

Frosso Efthymiadi-Menegaki (1911- 1995)
Animals of the Andes, 1954
Hammered iron, 120 x 98 x 34 cm
Frosso Efthymiadi-Menegaki Bequest

Nature, City, Cosmos – Anthony E. Comninos Foundation Temporary Exhibitions Gallery

Art from the ΜΟΜus–Modern Art Museum’s Kostakis Collection

The exhibition Nature, City, Cosmos: Art from the Kostakis Collection in MOMus–Modern Art Museum marks the 30th anniversary of the first presentation of the Kostakis Collection in Greece, held at the National Gallery in December 1995 under the curatorship of Anna Kafetsi.

That 1995 exhibition sparked the Ministry of Culture’s acquisition of the Kostakis Collection, finalised in 2000, after which the collection was transferred to the State Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki (now MOMus–Museum of Modern Art–Kostakis Collection). Since then, the collection of 1,277 works has expanded with additional pieces and a vast archival trove.

This new exhibition at the National Gallery reintroduces the collection through a fresh lens, exploring the interaction between humans and their environments – a central theme in Russian art during the early twentieth century, intricately tied to the ideological, political, and aesthetic movements of that historical period. The rapid shifts of this era, from the canon to experimentation and convention to utopia, shaped art’s relationship with life as it manifested in constructed space (City), organic space (Nature), and unexplored space (Cosmos). The exhibition will also examine the intersection of visual art and other art forms of the period.

Approximately 250 artworks and archival objects from the Kostakis Collection will be on display.

Opening:  November 2025 

Curated by: Maria Tsantsanoglou, Syrago Tsiara

Ivan Kliun
Portrait of the artist’s wife, 1910
Watercolor, charcoal and pencil on paper,  34,2 x 29,1 cm
© MOMus-Museum of Modern Art, Kostaki Collection

Stories From the National Gallery Archive – Space in Between

The exhibition involves research by visual artist Natasa Biza, who explored the National Gallery historical archives. Through her investigation, she brings to light compelling stories from the peripheries of the museum’s institutional and museological history, as well as Greece’s broader cultural history. Biza’s interest in the museum archive is rooted in her artistic practice, which engages with institutional critique and the artistic representation of material culture and historical archives.

This exhibition is part of the programme of temporary exhibitions of National Gallery’s Space in Between. The aim of this programme is to create a creative conversation between the collections, history and archive of the organisation and contemporary artistic and curatorial approaches.

Opening: October 2025 

Curated by: Elpiniki Meintani

National Gallery Building, Department A, 15.11.1969 | National Gallery Photo Archive