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Although Greece is synonymous with ancient history and renowned for its landmarks and mythology, it is also a vibrant, contemporary nation. Yet few of the millions of tourists who visit Greece every year have the opportunity to see modern Greece, and even fewer will see the art and artists that define contemporary Greek culture.

Greece has had neither a Renaissance nor an industrial revolution; "modern" Greece barely existed before the nineteen sixties. But, the shock of modernization triggered a creative revolution in its arts. Greek visual artists, in their own quest for identity, looked simultaneously inward to Greece's past and outward to the world. The result has been a highly idiosyncratic art, aesthetically aligned with international movements, but always tempered by native visual interpretive traditions such as Byzantine and folk art. It is an art that is inventive, explosively colourful, and never boring - the sublime and the banal can be found side by side.