Anna Grigora

Anna was born in 1959, Athens Greece. She studied at the Fine Arts school of Athens. Until this day she has participated in 150 team exhibitions in Greece and Europe and had 15 exhibitions of her own. Some of her paintings belong to the museum of Basilis and Elisa Goulandri in Andros, the history department of the museum of Hydras, the Gallery of Karditsa and Mesologgi and to the Gallery Viannou in Crete. Her work has been published in Greek newspapers and magazines.


Solo exhibitions:



No News Available.

Colour and light. Lyricism and poetry.

The essential point of Anna's Grigora work.

I met Anna Grigora in the beginning of her artistic work. It was the summer of 1992. The first one, after her graduation from the university (U.O.A). Her persistence to meet me, gave me the impression that my opinion was important. She was truly interested to know what was my opinion about her work. We met, exchanged thoughts and ideas.

It was a time when she was searching a dream of a new world. Her wish was to put the world into the silence of her own art. I felt her fear and agony to tame shapes and forms. I felt her anxiety to formalize memories which wished to turn them into present-day. To bring them into her own aesthetical being. She knew exactly what she wanted, she was not willing to spent time and energy in ephemeral neologisms. Like these which have been made in order to cover some kind of creeping bareness of expression. On the contrary, she was determined to follow the hard, strenuous way that leads to the big art ceremony. To the free art. Without barriers and bounds.

In a period of improvident spending of optical innocence, it's fascinating to hear young people being determined to reverse things according, though, to the spirit of genuiness of art worthiness. Among the polluted picture of various transmutations of digital pictures, Anna Grigora wanted to be present, determined to follow traditional, time-tested technics.

What I kept in my head after our first meeting, was her artistic honesty. She wanted her art filled with doubts, hesitations, disappointments and enthusiasms, without, however, overstepping the limits of her not negotiable honesty.

Her first pieces of work, were simple, plain, lucent aquarelles. Although I felt deeply touched and excited - I could foresee qualitative elements ready to blossom - I expressed a moderate opinion. What I did, was to remind her what Rainer Maria Rilke answered to a young poet who asked his opinion about his poetry: a piece of art is born in silence and lives in loneliness. Artist should grow up slowly but steady like a tree.

Since then, I have been watching carefully her work. With the same inexhaustible sensitivity, honesty, inspiration, instinct and at the same time with the same questions and doubts, she converts her daily experiences into paintings. Each stroke with her paint brush becomes an urge to the amazing and wonderful. I feel that each piece of her work comes as a result of time passing by, of memories and real places which have been being loved by the artist. They are precious , beloved memories which rise an imaginative negotiation.

From times to times, I watched her work carrying elements of impressionism, lifeless nature, fruits and flowers. Scarcely, there were some portraits which inclined influence of expressionism. Nevertheless, she feels landscape painting very deeply and it is her strong point. This delightful colourful blending is unique for these landscape paintings.

Her painting is truly a hymn to colours and nature. That nature has a home. The home of our childhood. A wave of nostalgia hit each one of us. Not a long time ago. I saw in Argo her pieces of work. Landscapes in the scale of the yellow colour. Throughout the strong colourful blending I could watch the virgin nature being fertilized by the artists memories. I felt her relief and sense of freedom beneath the hot sun of recollection and the paganistic celebration of the sun. Having watched her work very carefully for at least ten years since I first met Anna Grigora, I find her, following her own path. Always out of systems and forms. Being renewed and evolved, without being repeated. Willing to express her talent using tested technics. Enjoying her work. Being happy for what she does. I wish she is, and always be, a happy painter.

April 2004, Kyriakos J. Koutsomalles

Nostalgia and light

The landscapes that Anna Grigora is painting with aquarelle or oil paint are inspired by her experiences and memories.

The light is the moving power of every image. The reflections and the rays of light even the transparent shadows and the multiple transitions of color tones, gives to the painter’s expressive hand, style, texture and volume. She expresses nostalgia, truth and mystery of every untouchable moment of life through her paintings, which the eyes try to find in these sceneries of reality and dreams.

Athina Schina, History of Art and Critic

Send a Message to Anna

restart
Your information
Your Comments
Are you human?