Виртуальный Музей Георгия Яковидиса

1. General Information
2. The Painter George Iakovidis
3. Opening Times

General Information

Born out of the combination of cutting-edge technology and modern art, The Digital Museum George Iakovidis is the first entirely digital museum in the entirety of Greece. Located in the Lesvos village of Chydira (Xidera), it is the only exhibition space where the colours of the original paintings may be admired in the way the painter intended as the digital images bring out the colours in their original vividness and undistorted by the passage of time. To marvel at the Iakovidis’ work, do make the trip to the small agricultural village of Chydira and make the most of the technology available in order best to showcase his paintings. You will be enthralled at the visual imagery and the manner that technological advance may shape the viewer’s experience of the art and aesthetics of this major Greek artist.

The Painter George Iakovidis

Born in Chydira in the year 1853, George Iakovidis became a student at the Athens School of Arts and received a scholarship to join the Bavarian Fine Arts Academy. He soon became established as a hugely promising young artist, his work receiving the praise of contemporary critics and aesthetes in a number of early exhibitions of his paintings. In 1888, Iakovidis founded his own School of Art in the city of Munich, which remained operational until 1898.

Iakovidis became recognized as a major Greek painter and aesthete. Knighted in recognition of his selfless teaching of Oil Painting in the Greek School of Arts, and favored by the entire royal family of Greece as their exclusive portrait painter, he arose in status and financial means unmatched by any of his colleagues’. Few, if any, other artists of his time received as much critical acclaim and recognition as Iakovidis, who became appointed by the King as Head of the Greek School of Fine Arts in the year 1910, and, in 1914, undertook to manage the National Gallery of the country. Iakovidis passed away at the age of eighty and received posthumous acclaim in 2005, when the Greek National Gallery organized an exhibition of his extensive work.

A master of German naturalism, Iakovidis produced a huge variety of paintings, all which display the theatricality and austerity of the German naturalist mode. His sojourn in Germany encouraged him to select everyday themes such as still lives, the imagery of children at play, floral motifs and house interiors. His return to Greece marked his elevation as a superb painter of portraits and Iakovidis continues to be regarded as a producer of incomparably expressive portraiture.

His opus is comprised of some two hundred oil paintings, several of which are on display in Europe and overseas. His son, the actor Michalis Iakovides, donated his personal journal - which includes a list of his paintings between 1878 and 1919 - to the National Gallery of Greece in 1951.

To learn more about this highly-acclaimed painter, venture to his birthplace, the small, little-known village of Chydira, and pay a visit to the George Iakovidis Digital Museum. It is the only entirely digital exhibition space in the country of Greece and, as any expert of painting would tell you, the only place in the world where the paintings of the great Greek artist may be observed in their original brilliance.

Opening Times

The Museum is open Monday to Sunday, 09:00 am - 17:00 pm from January 1st to June 30th and from September 1st to December 31st. Between the months of July and August, the Digital Museum can be visited between 09:00 am and 19:00 pm. Tickets are priced at 2.00 euros (1.00 euro concessions also available).