LEVENTIS PINACOTHECA

This art gallery opened in 2014 (Λεβέντειος Πινακοθήκη/Leventios Pinakothiki, Leventis Gallery) houses 800 works, mainly paintings by major French, Greek, Cypriot and European artists of the 19th and 20th centuries. They were part of the formidable collection of the Cypriot businessman and art lover Anastasios G. Leventis (1902-1978) who made his fortune in Nigeria and lived in Paris. On the first floor, the space devoted to Cypriot painters houses The World of Cyprus (1967-1972), a composition in eleven panels by Adamantios Diamantis (1900-1994). On the second floor, a change of scenery with the Parisian apartments where Leventis lived from 1948. The two addresses of the boulevard Suchet and the avenue Foch are reconstituted with small bronzes of the seventeenth century, Chinese porcelains of the Tang dynasty (seventh-tenth centuries), paintings from the workshop of Titian (fifteenth-sixteenth centuries), a Head of Christ by Rubens (seventeenth century) ... Among the other masterpieces, note the views of Venice and Florence by Canaletto (mid-18th century) and the paintings by Fragonard and Gainsborough (18th century).

Monet, Renoir, Chagall ... Another very rich room follows ("From impressionism to modernism"). Here we find the pointillism of Paul Signac with Le Chaland (1901), a little-known Monet(La Seine à Jeufosse près de Vernon, 1884), a beautiful Plage de Trouville (1889) by Eugène Boudin, late works by Pissarro and Sisley, such as this Vue de Moret et des rives du Loing (1887), and no less than three paintings by Renoir, including a touching portrait of his son(La Collerette, 1909) Closer to home, the collection includes works by brothers Raoul and Jean Dufy and a Chagall from the series of Fiancés au bouquet (1954-1963). Also note the small sculpture by Aristide Maillol. The second floor houses the Greek painters. We enjoy immersing ourselves in the magnificent landscapes of the Cyclades, Mount Athos and the Acropolis of Athens as seen by classical artists of the late nineteenth century or more contemporary with a stunning view of the island of Hydra carved on wood and painted by Tassos (1914-1985). We also note the Reapers by Stelios Miliadis (1881-1965), an elegant Japanese Landscape by the Franco-Greek Demetrios Galanis (1879-1966) as well as the beautiful portraits of the great painters Giorgos Gounaropoulos (1890-1977) and Panayiotis Tetsis (1925-2016).