On Wednesday, December 4, at 7:00 p.m., the exhibition "Treasures of the collection Pietro Bellasi and Katerina Papageorgiou Bellasi" will be open to the public at the Giorgio de Chirico Art Center (3 Metamorfoseos Street, Volos). The exhibition will run until January 31, 2025, with visiting hours from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., and free admission.
The event is organized by the University of Thessaly in collaboration with the Management and Utilization Committee of the Pietro Bellasi and Katerina Papageorgiou Bellasi Collection, with the enthusiastic support of the Rector and Committee President, Charalampos Billinis.
This unique collection in Greece comprises 201 significant works of printmaking and graphic art by internationally renowned Greek and foreign artists. It is notable for its artistic range, quality, and aesthetic value. The collection was donated to the University of Thessaly by the Bellasi couple, following a complex process for exporting the works from Italy that began in August 2016 under the rectorship of Mr. G. Petrakos. The donation agreement was finalized in February 2022 under Rector Z. Mamouris.
The exhibition focuses on highlighting the collectors’ selections, offering visitors a "biography" of a collection that began in the 1970s in Italy. It sheds light on the journey of this extraordinary international collection, now gifted to the citizens of Volos, the hometown of donor Katerina Papageorgiou Bellasi.
The exhibition provides a unique journey through the treasures of modern art, serving as a space for aesthetic appreciation and education. It features works by internationally acclaimed artists who have become part of the global history of modernism, such as Max Ernst, Giorgio de Chirico, Max Klinger, Lucio Fontana, Jean Tinguely, Marino Marini, Arman Fernandez, César (Baldaccini), Victor Vasarely, Hans Hartung, Alberto Burri, Max Bill, and others. Renowned Greek artists, including Dimitris Galanis, Yiannis Moralis, Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas, Yiannis Tsarouchis, Yiannis Spyropoulos, and Alekos Kondopoulos, are also represented.
Additionally, the exhibition showcases various printmaking and graphic art techniques, such as woodcut, etching, aquatint, lithography, screen printing, and collage, emphasizing the distinctive expressiveness of each method as employed by contemporary artists. Works by significant international figures in printmaking, including Yvette Balif, Angela Colombo, Diana Pietro, Gianfranco Ferroni, Dante Maffei, Sandro Martini, Giulia Napoleone, Ugo Nespolo, Walter Valentini, Vladimir Velickovic, Karel Demel, Kunito Nagaoka, Endre Szász, and Dorothea Wight, will be featured. Additionally, notable Greek printmakers such as Alexandros Korogiannakis, Angelos Theodoropoulos, Petros (Papavasileiou), Vasso Katraki, Tassos (Alevizos), and Voula Masoura will be presented—many for the first time in Volos.
A catalog of all the works included in the donation, now part of the University of Thessaly's collection, accompanies the exhibition.
The curation of the exhibition was undertaken by students from the Department of Culture, Creative Media, and Industries of the University of Thessaly, supervised by art historians Sotiris Bahtsetzis, Associate Professor at the Department, and Fani Parafofou, Lab Teaching Staff Member of the Department of Architecture, with contributions from the collector, Katerina Papageorgiou Bellasi herself.
The overall coordination of the project is managed by Mr. Dimitris Dervenis, General Secretary of the Management and Utilization Committee of the Pietro Bellasi and Katerina Papageorgiou Bellasi Collection.