Letter from Athens
It is an almost disappeared art that strives to perpetuate the managers of Athinaion.
In the entrance hall of this cinema in the center of Athens, only an old period projector exposed in front of the popcorn bar echoes the vintage appearance of the gigantic posters from the films on the program, freshly painted by hand and exhibited on the facade of the establishment.
Of Pierrot the madman has Avatar, By passing through the ten Greek films produced each year, athinaion commands and has deployed each week for sixty-five years the posters painted by hand of the new films in operation in its rooms. A gradually disappeared tradition from the world of the seventh art from the mid -1970s, but that successive owners – all from the same family – from this cinema founded in 1960 have never abandoned.
Behind all these posters hides the work of the artist Virginia Axioti who has taken, for ten years, the relay of Vassilis Dimitriou, an ex-boxer, self-taught in painting, who died in September 2020. Petite-daughter of one of the two brothers who founded Athinaion, Virginia Axioti is the last painter of Greece to perpetuate this art in the world. Each week, this graduate of the fine arts of Athens painted in acrylic, in his workshop located on the island of Lesbos, the billboards Films screened in the two large rooms of athinaion.
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Source: Lemonde