Religious Icons (Aghia Kioura, Leros)

Category: Visual Arts > Public space

Artist:Antonis Karagiannis | Takis Tzaneteas | Kyriakos Tsakiris
Year:1967-1969
Genre:Iconography
Location:Monastery of Aghia Matrona or Kioura
Place:Partheni | Leros

Censorship incidents

1974–1979
Destruction of religious icons painted by Antonis Karagiannis, Takis Tzaneteas and Kyriakos Tsakiris at Aghia Kioura of Leros
Reason:Defamation of Christian religion | Religion | Politics
Type of censorship:Destruction | Institutional censorship | Repressive censorship

Description

The small church of Aghia Matrona-Kioura is located at Partheni, on the island of Lesvos, just a kilometer away from the infamous exile camp that “hosted” hundreds of political prisoners during the Colonels’ Dictatorship (1967-1974). In 1967, the prisoners decorated the church with icons, using a style which was far off from Byzantine iconography. During the Metapolitefsi, the monastery’s abbot covered the icons with plaster and lime, destroying them in the process. A few years later, the issue was raised by the Swiss Archaeological School, and the abbot argued that the icons were worthless because they were “non Byzantine-style […] works of communists”. In 1982, the Ministry of Culture declared the church a historical monument and the icons were gradually restored.

For full text and advanced filtering options check the relevant article in Greek.

Sources – Bibliography

  • Anti, issue 140, 07/12/1979.
  • To Vima, 13/10/1981.
  • Rizospastis, 23/08/2000.
  • Penelope Petsini, «Agia Kiura» in P. Petsini and D. Christopoulos (eds.) Dictionary of Censorship in Greece: Cachectic democracy - dictatorship - metapolitefsi, Athens: Kastaniotis 2018.

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