The Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki gladly presents the art exhibition Figures and Dialogues: Ancient Vase-painting and Contemporary Artistic Creations, by the Spanish artist Miguel Ángel Vázguez Vera.

Vera is a modern painter, who recognizes the potentials of ancient Greek art and exploits in his work the ability of Greek vase-painting to function as a symbolic code of communication.

The exhibition is organized in three parts, through which the dialectic developed between the artist and his “muse”, namely black-figure, red-figure and white-ground pottery of archaic and classical era, is detectible.

In the first part fifty one drawings are presented. They all reproduce scenes depicted on vases from the collection of AMTh. To render with high accuracy every detail, Vera took multiple successive shots of each scene and combined them in the right order, thus producing accurate photo-drawings. Twenty ancient vases are exhibited along with their drawings.

In the second part three folded sketch-books are presented. They are in fact a study of figures depicted on ancient vases and they function as the link between the ancient figure and its contemporary rendition. One sketch-book reproduces parts of figures depicted on AMTh vases, while the other two focus on figures from vessels kept in famous museums around the world..

In the third part of the exhibition sixty one of the artists’ original creations are introduced. They show how figures on ancient vases inspired the artist, how they triggered his imagination and how he incorporated them in his version of modern society. The figures are shown relaxing, having fun, playing games or music, but also protesting or being hungry, all that in a wide variety of shapes and colors.