Dymitris Mytaras a Contemporary Artist

Dymitris Mytaras

Dymitris Mytaras born in Chalkis in 1934.  He is one of the most known contemporary artist in Greece of the 20th Century. Dymitris Mytaras in his works the most prominent features are the intense movement of the design and the vivid colors.  An expressionistic atmopshere, along with an obvious mood for social antique are prevalent in all the periods in the last thirty years.

He started his studies in 1953 and graduated in 1957 from the Athens School of fine Arts, his professor was Yiannis Moralis another great visual artist and he was a part of the so called "Generation of the 30's".  A few years later he went to Paris, France and studied stage Design at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts Decoratifs.  Later on, he found a job from 1964 until 1972 in the Interior Decoration Workshop as he directed  in the Athens School of Fine Arts.  His works has been in more than thirty international group show in many world's capitals including the 1972 Venice Biennale.  

Venice Biennale:  Is an International Art Exhibition, is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every 2 years in Venice, Italy.  It started in 1985, and it focus on contemporary art, which includes specific events about art, contemporary dance, architecture, cinema and theater.

One of his best art works are included in the Photographic Documents.  During the time of the Greek military junta of 1967-1974, Mytaras sought out to comment critically on Greek life through a series of realistic works.  The Greek Military junta, as some preferred to call it as the "revolution to save the nation".  The reason their justification was that a "communist conspiracy", effected Greece's bureaucracy, academia, press and military to such an extent that drastic action was needed to protect the country from communist takeover.  To a conclusion for this period of junta, which it was clearly an important period for the Greeks.  It was the time of hippies, when everyone should believe in peace.  However, many Greek artists have been influenced from this period.

After his Photographic Documents, from that historical event in Greece, especially in Athens he turned towards classical themes.  Classical antiques, is from the civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, mostly known as the Greco-Roman world.  In that period Greek and Roman had a great impact in Europe, North Africa and Middle East.  It started from the great mythology- poetry of Homer.  The ancient Greeks prevailed through out classical antiquity as the basis of art, philosophy, society and educational ideas.

Moreover, he created one of the official posters of the Summer Olympic Games, which took place in Athens in 2004. Since the revival of the Games in 1986 posters were designed by painters and graphic artists to promote the Games and demonstrate the artistic level of the host country.  The Organizing Committee create a panel formed by personalities of the art world and asked them to identify a list of 28 Greek artists.  Two of them where Dymitris Mytaras and Yiannis Moralis his college professor.  Those artists were invited to create a work of art especially for the Athens Games, which would be used to develop 28 posters symbolizing the number of the Games.

The theme of the posters was the Sports Pictograms. Each poster could function independently.  All 28 combined together produced a giant composition.  They were printed in two sizes normal and mini poster size.  The mini posters were presented together as a collection and the normal ones individually. 

Some of his works....

 He mostly used acrylic colors.