One of the season’s most dynamic Greek art events took place during November. From 4-7 November, works featured in international auction house Bonhams’ Greek Sale will be on view in a mansion at 36 Amalias. The works will then travel to Paris for another exclusive preview before the auction on November 20. The Greek Sale preview, which is always highly anticipated, includes works by modern and contemporary Greek masters from private collections – many of them previously unseen – curated by art consultants Art Expertise.

The upcoming sale includes exciting works in a broad range of prices. Works on paper can be a good place to start. These include a Konstantinos Parthenis ink and pencil sketch of of Venus (est. €3,000 – €4,000), and an Alekos Fassianos watercolor on paper Jeune homme avec foulard (est. €3,000 – €5,000), both classic and instantly recognizable instances of the artists’ respective styles. 

In addition, the sale offers works that are deeply intertwined with Greece’s cultural and historical narrative. A small Tsarouchis oil on canvas depicting a branch of olives was painted in the late 1980s at the request of Melina Mercouri as a logo for Greece’s bid to host the 1996 Summer Olympics in Athens. A gouache on paper by Georgios Gounaropoulos, L’apothéose de Péricles, was done as a study for his monumental mural commissioned in 1939 for the Athens Town Hall Council Chamber, which would have the Apotheosis of Pericles as its centerpiece. Both pieces are estimated at €3,000 – €5,000. There’s also an extraordinary work by Fotis Kontoglou, La belle Daniaz de Perse (est. €12,000 – €18,000). While Kontoglou is known for his Byzantine-inspired sacred and secular works, this nude is an unusual piece, an echo of the murals he had done for a long-demolished bath house in the center of Athens, and a work much admired by his pupil, Tsarouchis. 

Fans of surrealism, abstraction, pop art, op art, arte povera, and other contemporary and avant-garde movements will also find much to admire. Yannis Spyropoulos’ Lindos, an abstract oil on canvas of 1959-60, is estimated at €30,000 – €50,000. Yiannis Gaitis’s wood and metal construction Boite de sardines, which features painted wooden cut-outs of his well-known men in bowler hats instead of fish, is estimated to be worth €5,000 – €7,000. Other three-dimensional works include a classic George Lappas,  Acrobate bleu (est. €12,000 – €18,000), one of his most well-known motifs, a gorgeous Sophia Vari, Hélène de Troie (est. €10,000 – €15,000), and Opy Zouni’s 1982 Espace (€10,000 – €15,000).

Two significant pieces lead this season’s sale, both by artists with an impressive track record at auction. Yannis Moralis’ Eroticon, a large oil on canvas from 1997, is sure to generate excitement. Following the success of Moralis’ La Romance at Bonhams’ November 2023 Greek Sale – where it sold for €660,800, more than doubling its €180,000 – €250,000 estimate and setting a new high for the artist in Europe – Eroticon (estimated at €300,000 – €500,000) could potentially break that record.

The highest estimate in the sale is for a piece by Yannis Tsarouchis. His 1965 angelic, life-sized figure Jeune homme posant comme Eros avec une chaise anglaise fills the picture plane, standing with the casual contrapposto of a Kouros. The work is estimated at €400,000 – €600,000. The current record price for a work by Tsarouchis was reached in 2023, when an allegory of the month of May sold at an Athens auction for €475,542, well above the original estimate of €200,000-300,000. Setting the stage for such estimates for Tsarouchis’ work was the stunning recent performance of La garde oubliée of 1955, which reached €441,375 at the Bonhams’ Greek Sale in November of 2022, a tremendous increase over its original estimate of €80,000-120,000. As a result, anticipation for Jeune homme posant comme Eros avec une chaise anglaise is high. 

Record sales like these mark the steady rise in demand in the international market for quality Greek art. It’s an exciting development as works by Modern Greek masters are commanding increasingly serious prices, taking their rightful place on the international stage – a gratifying win for the profile of Greek Culture.