THE EXHIBITION

The Foundation of the Hellenic World organizes at the Cultural Centre Hellenic Cosmos the exhibition "The sea of gods, heroes and men in the ancient Greek art"/" La mer des dieux, des heros et des hommes dans l'art grec antique", which is under the auspices of the Cultural Department of the French Embassy and supported by the French Institute in Athens.

The visitors of the exhibition, through various representations of ancient pottery, "travel" to the Greek sea. There they discover, apart from the rich variety of fauna, numerous gods and heroes and revel in antique myths that come to life and have constituted an endless source of inspiration for art and literature from Antiquity to the present day.

The exhibition includes the following units:

I. The kingdom of the sea

II. The gods of the sea:
a) Poseidon and Amphitrite b) Poseidon's sons and other sea monsters c) Nereus and his daughters Nereids

III. Gods and heroes travel

IV. The birth of Aphrodite

The vessels with scenes from the sea, of exceptional quality and high aesthetics, owe their wide dissemination to the sea routes: in their majority they were found in Etruria during excavations in the 19th century astounding the archaeologists. Most of them are in the Museum of Louvre and are rather unknown to the Greek public. And although original works are absent, their large scale representations, combined with the excellent quality photographs, allow us to discern details of the ancient drawing, which are often hard to see with the naked eye. Furthermore, the wealth of the colored image demonstrates the peculiarities of this style and provides a realistic view of the representation.