Kardamitsi-Adami Maro
MOUSEIO BENAKI 5, 2005
193-198, 2006
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The return to roots and tradition was a general trend of late 19th - early 20th-century Europe which emerged in Greece in the late 1910’s. The “1930’s movement” constituted the background to the establishment of the Greek Popular Art Society, which aimed at the preservation of tradition and its adaptation to contemporary culture.
In 1935 the Society asked Dimitris Pikionis to set up a group to study Greek popular architecture. The material which was gathered on its expeditions (printed matter, sketches, watercolours, photographs etc) was assembled with a view to publication. After the war the Royal National Foundation sponsored the two first volumes, which dealt with Kastoria and Zagora. In 2005 the Historical and Ethnographical Society of Greece published another volume on the mansions at Kozani and Siatista (the Society houses a major part of the material collected by the Greek Popular Art Society study group). The Archives of neo-Hellenic Architecure at the Benaki Museum also contain three sets of plates which form part of the layout of the volumes on Kastoria, Kozani and Siatista: these were the work of the great teacher Dimitris Pikionis, the inspiration behind the programme, and were donated by Dimitris and Alexandra Moretti in 1999. They consist of 43 plates of sketches and collages which have a clear internal logic and are simple and economical, enabling the reader to acquire a ready working knowledge of the popular architecture of these areas, as well as presenting a comparative study of its individual features. In addition to this Pikionis’s plates, produced with his well-known sensitivity and graphic skill, constitute a small testimonial to the personality of an outstanding teacher.
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