Glyn Hughes 1931 - 2014

23 Cyprus at the dawn of the Republic At the dawn of the Republic of Cyprus (1960), how different was the production of art by Greek Cypriots from the rest of the international art community? 5 Despite changes in the socio-political and economic structure, Cyprus still remained a small, closed and conservative society. This had consequences that Hughes and Savva addressed in the foundation of their gallery. While under British rule, the first decades of the twentieth century in Cyprus produced artists who, on the one hand, became the first ‘qualified’ professionals, having studied at schools of fine arts abroad, and on the other, became teachers of a younger generation of artists, who, despite the challenging times, followed the often onerous path of visual arts. 6 Through their different idiosyncrasies, one can say that these artists created their own distinct local style of painting in Cyprus. A style dominated by contradictions, influenced both by English colonial culture and by Greek nationalism (especially the vision for the Union of Cyprus with Greece – the motherland), which had developed during British colonial rule. Thus, what one readily observes inmodern Cypriot art is a paradoxical combination of orientalist expressions and nuances –an exoticization of the island and its inhabitants, mainly in relation to folk, Byzantine and medieval traditions– and efforts to highlight the ‘heroic’ and ‘glorious’ (Greek) past of the island, as well as its historical consistency and continuity. Following the independence of the island, a creative euphoria took hold of the Greek Cypriots in relation to their newly formed state. After decades of colonial rule, the Greek Cypriots had the opportunity to determine for themselves the political, social, economic and cultural structures of the island. 7 Many young artists, most of whom had studied in the United Kingdom, settled permanently on the island and, by introducing new trends and innovative ideas, brought about Cyprus’s initiation into the uneasy 1960s. In the Western world, things were somewhat different. As Gabriele Detterer lucidly points out, the rebellious spirit of the 1960s, which questioned everything, also stirred up the field of art. 8 Criticism of society along with anti-conformist protests created the preconditions for the opening of the floodgates of creativity and aesthetics that dared to be radically new. Traditional pictorial conceptions were attacked and vanquished by experimental art practices. In this phase of new beginnings, a great number of art movements came to prominence: Fluxus, minimalism, conceptual art, body art, performance art, media art. Avant-garde art practices extended the boundaries of the concept of fine art and crossed the visual repertory of art with sign and meaning systems derived from music, literature, linguistics, philosophy, theatre and science. In parallel with the crossing of disciplines, aesthetics was steered onto new paths by innovative electronic communication techniques and Canadian Marshall McLuhan’s media theory and his famous phrase “the medium is the message” . 9 In every respect, new times were dawning, and the traditional role and function of the artist were therefore also questioned critically in this phase of rethinking, experimenting and looking ahead.