The Municipal Art Gallery of Mithymna was inaugurated in August 1981 at the initiative of the then mayor Kostas Doukas, the writer Nasos Theofilos, the artist Apostolos Yagiannos and the contribution of the painter Chronis Botsoglou is being opened to the public for the first time. The need to have a housing space for the works of the artists who resided in Mithymna dates back to the late 1950s and the beginnings of its touristic and cultural development.
The Gallery originally listed 77 works donated either by the artists themselves or art collectors. Over the years new works have come to enrich the existing collection which now lists over two hundred works.The Gallery’s collection hosts works by older artists, such as the two designs by Giannoulis Halepas, but also by a generation of younger artists with intense activity during the 1960s and 1970s, characterized by a new realism that brings modern Greek reality into contact with the Europe. Many of these artists will later teach for long periods of time at the Athens School of Fine Arts. Today, the Gallery is expanding its collection with new acquisitions by contemporary artists. Thus, alongside traditional media, the visitor has the opportunity to come into contact with documents from installations in nature, on-site constructions and conceptual projects.
The building was originally known as the “Eftaliotis Museum”, since it was intended to house the manuscripts of Argiris Eftaliotis that George Valletas would bring from Paris. For this reason, the sculptor Apartis created the bust of Eftaliotis which is located in the courtyard of the building. Its architecture corresponds to the traditional type of lesbian residence, while its decoration is characteristic, such as the cobblestones on the ground floor of the building.
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