As Summer Fades, Athens Bursts Into a Vibrant September of Art Exhibitions

Autumn and galleries in Athens have always gone hand in hand. And although the calendar may say September, the city is still basking in summer, with temperatures soaring above 30°C. Against this backdrop, Athens prepares for a vibrant season of cultural events, with exhibitions unfolding across the city.

Art Athina kicks off the month with its annual gathering at Zappeion, followed by a rich program of shows featuring emerging talents, first-time solo exhibitions, international names, and artists drawing inspiration from Greece itself. A highlight is the opening of the Greek pavilion of the Gaza Biennale—a collective art project uniting more than 50 artists from Gaza as an act of resistance, hosted in 14 cities worldwide.

Art Athina @ Zappeion (September 18-22)

For five days, Athens’ iconic Zappeion Hall becomes the beating heart of contemporary art as Art Athina, the International Contemporary Art Fair, returns for its annual autumn rendezvous. From 18–22 September, the fair will showcase 72 galleries from Greece and abroad, offering a rich panorama of artistic production that spans painting, sculpture, photography, and digital media.

Beyond its core gallery presentations, Art Athina is celebrated for its multifaceted parallel program, which includes design projects, performances, and talks with international voices from the art world. This lively agenda positions the fair not only as an exhibition event but also as a dynamic platform for experimentation, dialogue, and cultural exchange.

With its mission to highlight new trends while fostering critical conversations, Art Athina once again reaffirms its role as a vital meeting point for artists, curators, collectors, and the public, both locally and globally.

Opening: Thursday 18 September (by invitation only)
19–22 September: 12:00–21:00

“La Bocca La Grotta” @ MOMus–Museum Alex Mylona

The winner of the Art Athina New Artist Award 2024, Panos Profitis, presents his solo exhibition La Bocca La Grotta at the MOMus–Alex Mylonas Museum, opening 12 September (inauguration at 20:00).

The exhibition title — “The Mouth, The Cave” — evokes Platonic allegories and the oracles of chthonic sanctuaries, reflecting Profitis’ fascination with archetypal binaries: light and darkness, upper and lower worlds, comedy and tragedy, life and death, the cosmic and the metaphysical.

Curated by Areti Leopoulou, the exhibition features sculptures, constructions, and scenographic installations, resonating powerfully within a museum dedicated to contemporary sculpture. Profitis draws on a hybrid, postmodern visual language that revisits the plastic forms of archaic statuary and reconsiders the human body as symbol and myth.

This exhibition is part of MOMus’ collaboration with Art Athina and the Hellenic Art Galleries Association, underlining their shared commitment to supporting and promoting new Greek contemporary artists. A bilingual catalogue accompanies the show, while the 2025 New Artist Award will be announced during Art Athina at Zappeion on 19 September.

The Sea at the Epicenter of Two Exhibitions @ The Breeder Gallery

The Breeder presents two parallel exhibitions that place the sea at the center of artistic reflection.

Forever Fish, a solo show by Aristeidis Lappas, continues his exploration of aquatic worlds as spaces of healing, transformation, and ecological entanglement. Building on his recent institutional exhibition Gift of the Moon Crab in Germany, Forever Fish brings those works to Greece for the first time, alongside new pieces created especially for this presentation.

The title references “forever chemicals”—synthetic substances that linger indefinitely in water systems—highlighting the ecological and psychological urgency of Lappas’ practice. If the moon crab once guided viewers through the subconscious, here the fish becomes a metaphor of endurance: fragile yet resilient, a reminder of humanity’s precarious connection to aquatic life.

In Lappas’ work, water is both subject and metaphor: a source of life, a vessel of memory, and a witness to human impact.

Running in parallel is Summer Nostalgia, a presentation of works by Kostas Paniaras (1934–2014). Deeply influenced by his upbringing in the seaside town of Kiato, Paniaras returned again and again to the sea as a central theme in his work.

In the series Kolymvitries (Female Bathers) (1997–1998), women appear to move with the waves in a delicate balance between memory and myth. For Paniaras, a woman in the sea became nothing less than a modern Venus: “They may be the girls we fell in love with in the summers in Kiato, or they may be Venus herself—born in Kiato instead of Cyprus or Cythera, why not?”

Paniaras’ multidisciplinary career spanned painting, sculpture, stage design, and installation, often blending experimental techniques with deeply personal memories of place. Summer Nostalgia, nearly three decades later, invites viewers to project their own recollections of summers past, echoing the timeless pull of the Greek sea.

“Nights” @ Skoufa Gallery (11 September – 11 October)

Leda Kontogiannopoulou returns with her tenth solo exhibition, Nights, at Skoufa Gallery, opening 11 September.

Known for her sensitive explorations of light and shadow, Kontogiannopoulou expands on themes from her earlier work (The House of Memory, Benaki Museum, 2021). The new exhibition is structured in four groups: figures, urban landscapes, still lifes, and interiors — all infused with an atmosphere of nocturnal intimacy.

Her works are marked by careful compositional balance and subtle harmonies of color, while her figures and spaces are imbued with a quiet poetic quality. As Krystalli Glyniadaki notes in the catalogue, these paintings hold “hidden secrets” — everyday objects and gestures transformed into narrative fragments of untold stories.

In Nights, viewers are guided on an inner journey: from the intensity of a human gaze to the secret life of objects under the spell of night.

“In the Line of Fire: Miracles Amid the Ruins – The Gaza Biennale” @ Lofos Art Project (September 18-November 4)

Athens joins 13 other cities worldwide in hosting the Gaza Biennale, a collective initiative born out of urgency and resilience. Titled “In the Line of Fire. Miracles Amid the Ruins”, the exhibition at Lofos Art Project presents works by artists living and working in Gaza amid the ongoing genocide, as well as artists of Gazan origin. Curated by Faye Tzanetoulakou and Dimitris Sarafianos, the show forms the Greek pavilion of this global project.

Since April 2024, more than 50 artists have come together under the Biennale’s umbrella, using art as a means of resistance and survival. Their works are both testimonies and calls to action—exploring what it means to create under the most extreme conditions, when entire communities and cultural legacies face erasure.

The Biennale is dedicated to the endurance of Palestinian art against relentless violence, affirming its role in preserving cultural identity and collective memory. It asks difficult but necessary questions: What does it mean to make art when genocide unfolds around you? What is revealed in the destruction of artists and cultural heritage? And how can art serve as a lifeline of hope in times of despair?

The pieces on view—created in the midst of bombardment and destruction—remind us of the unyielding necessity of art for human survival. At its heart, the Gaza Biennale is not only an exhibition but also a call for solidarity: urging audiences, artists, and institutions worldwide to stand with Palestinian creators and ensure that their voices and stories endure.

September 18 (at 7pm) – November 4
Tue–Sun, 6–9 p.m. | Free admission

“Windows” @ Arch Athens & Melas Martinos (17 September – 25 October)

Two Athenian spaces — ARCH Athens and Melas Martinos — jointly host Windows, a two-part exhibition by Rosalind Nashashibi, opening 17 September.

The London-based artist of Palestinian and Northern Irish heritage works across painting and film, often exploring perception, empathy, and collective histories. Her films are non-linear and layered with dynamics of power and memory, while her paintings reframe familiar motifs — swans, crosses, and geometric divisions — through fresh and unsettling perspectives.

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Drawing inspiration from late 19th-century Parisian artists, Nashashibi creates works that blur past and present, inviting viewers to reconsider the act of looking itself.

Melas Martinos, 50 Pandrossou St (12:00–18:00)
ARCH, 5 Gkoura St (11:00–18:00)

“Every Beach I Have Ever Slept In” @ Iris Galerie (16 September – 11 October)

In Every Beach I Have Ever Slept In, Alexandros Simopoulos revisits the beaches where he has dozed off throughout his life — some now lost to tourism, others under threat.

Combining memory, imagination, and archival photographs, Simopoulos paints these landscapes with references to folk art and the history of seascape painting. His canvases portray beaches as places of both personal and collective experience, layered with nostalgia and transformation.

Through this intimate cartography, the exhibition raises questions about permanence, memory, and the environmental future of these fragile places.

“Music and Mosaics” @ Bernier/Eliades Gallery (25 September – 8 November)

The Bernier/Eliades Gallery presents the third solo exhibition of Italian artist Paolo Colombo, Music and Mosaics, opening 25 September.

Working primarily in watercolours, Colombo creates a visual language where geometric patterns and figurative elements are woven into delicate compositions. In this show, he presents sound installations, floor mosaics, large mosaic watercolours, and portraits of Greek musicians, highlighting his fascination with Greek folk music of the early 20th century.

Inspired by Greek, Roman, and Byzantine mosaics, Colombo’s paintings evoke the draped folds of fabric, while simultaneously reaching back into antiquity for inspiration. His work, poised between poetic reflection and modernist discipline, bridges high art and folk tradition in a distinctive visual grammar.

“Master of the Uncanny” @ Pace Gallery & The Intermission (25 September)

A landmark event for Greek-born American artist Lucas Samaras, Master of the Uncanny opens 25 September in Piraeus, jointly organized by Pace Gallery and The Intermission.

This is Samaras’ first solo exhibition in Greece in nearly twenty years, bringing together works from across his six-decade career — a practice spanning sculpture, painting, photography, digital media, and wearable art.

Born in Kastoria in 1936 and immigrating to the U.S. in 1948, Samaras became a pioneering figure in the avant-garde, deeply engaged with questions of identity, memory, and transformation. His early involvement in the Happenings movement in New York in the late 1950s shaped his interdisciplinary approach, where performance, installation, and the body itself became sites of experimentation.

This exhibition is not only a homecoming but also a celebration of Samaras’ enduring partnership with Pace Gallery, which has represented him exclusively since 1965.