The Non-profit Cultural Association POLITES, with the support of the Organization of Culture, Sports and Youth of the City of Athens (OPANDA), is organizing a retrospective exhibition of the artist and Professor Emeritus at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Kyriakos Mortarakos. The exhibition, curated by Katerina Koskina, PhD in Art History and Museology, will be presented across both buildings of the City of Athens Art Gallery in Metaxourgeio, from November 27, 2025 to January 25, 2026. It will feature more than 150 works, arranged in thematic sections, beginning with the artist’s student years at the Athens School of Fine Arts and encompassing all periods of his artistic production. Alongside the paintings, archival material (printed, digital, and analog), installations, environmental works will also be on display, as well as video portrait of artist created especially for the restrospective. Following its presentation in Athens, the exhibition is planned to travel to Thessaloniki, where it will be hosted at the Municipal Gallery – Casa Bianca in the summer of 2026.

The art of Kyriakos Mortarakos, writes the exhibition curator, “unfolds as a distinctive, personal visual universe, where written language often substitutes the image through abstraction. It is characterized by the discreet yet robust presence of a materiality that reinforces the visual narrative. Through a provocative reduction of pictorial narration and the inclusion of ‘handwritten’ notes, numbers, and objects on the painted surface, he addresses existential issues such as time, remembrance, loss, and decay, as well as artistic concerns, such as representational practices and the scope, role, and rationale of painting today. The plastic idiom of Kyriakos Mortarakos is shaped by his use of writing, erasure, and smudging as expressive means—alongside color and the objects he occasionally affixes or inserts into the painted surface. His works function as pages of a personal diary, as a shared private archive of memory, where the imprint—through visual and written language—of a personal recollection, a trace, a moment, a day, or a thought plays a central role. The insistence on a narrative mode of painting, yet with part of the image replaced by written language; the structure of the composition, with references to interiors of architectural spaces and constructions; the relief-like, almost three-dimensional use of color; the personal notes, letters, and numbers displayed equally with the painted symbolic objects—all endow the paintings with a distinctive, mysterious, and allegorical character. They become instruments of internal exploration and vessels of meaning and emotion”.

A Short Bio: 

Kyriakos Mortarakos (Athens, 1948) studied painting, fresco, and scenography at the Athens School of Fine Arts under I. Moralis, V. Vassiliadis, and K. Xinopoulos. From 2005 to 2015, he served as a full professor at the School of Fine Arts of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and since 2015 he has been Professor Emeritus. He has presented twenty solo exhibitions in historic art venues in Greece and abroad, such as Zygos Gallery in Washington, D.C., and Nees Morfes and Zoumboulakis Galleries in Athens.Additionally, he has participated in group exhibitions in private and public institutions, including the Benaki Museum, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center (SNFCC), the Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki, the National Gallery of Athens, various Municipal Galleries, the Sismanoglio Megaro in Istanbul, the Artist Guild Center for Creative Arts in Shanghai, the Arad Biennial in Romania, and the Kunstverein Kunsthalle in Berlin. His works are included in the collections of public and private institutions and museums, such as the National Gallery – Alexandros Soutsos Museum, the National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST), the Museum of Modern Greek Art in Rhodes, as well as major private collections, including that of the European Central Bank in Germany. He lives and works in Athens.