Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika Gallery

The ground floor contains an urban drawing room, a gift by Litsa Papaspyrou, in memory of her father Gustave Boissière. It came from her paternal family’s house in Paris, containing works by French painters from the first decades of the twentieth century and furniture dating back to the 16th to the 18th centuries.

From the ground floor to the third floor the galleries highlight the intellectual and artistic output of Greece during the Interwar Years, a particularly crucial era, from the end of World War I and the disastrous Asia Minor campaign until the eve of the 1967 dictatorship, which is also the time during which Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika lived and formed his artistic conscience. This is the first ever attempt in Greece to create an imprint of the overall intellectual output, underscoring the internal dialectic relationships between different forms of expression of the human spirit. Artistic creations (painting, sculpture, engravings, music, theatre, cinema, photography) encounter architecture, the art of the word (literature, poetry, philology, criticism), but also historical and philosophical thought. Through works of art, manuscripts, publications, photographs and personal artefacts belonging to two-hundred-and-one artists and intellectuals, visitors can partake of an exciting journey through the world of ideas in Greece in the twentieth century. The materials on display are an eloquent record of the concerns, the anxieties, and the achievements of creative Greeks, highlighting the relationships that existed between them, and especially their ongoing debate with corresponding concerns that existed in the rest of Europe. This final aspect is crucial, given that during this period in particular, the focal presence of the Thirties Generation, established a need for a constant flow of intellectual ideas between Greece and the rest of Europe.

The third floor contains paintings, drawings, sculptures, set designs, manuscripts, illustrated books, photographs, as well as furnishings from the Hadjikyriakos-Ghika houses on the island of Hydra and on Kriezotou Street. The next two floors, which were preserved in their initial form, allow visitors to become familiar with the artist’s personal world: the impressive drawing room with its avant-garde architectural design, the living room, his father’s office with the family portraits and heirlooms, the dining room with the large-scale oil-painting Kifissia, and, naturally, the artist’s studio, an imposing space, where easels and painting supplies coexist with old furniture and artifacts from his journeys. 
Visitors can also tour an original multimedia application, entitled Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika and the Thirties Generation, designed by the Information Technology Department of the Benaki Museum, which contains all his works and provides information about the artist’s life and work both in Greece and in Europe. 

The Library forms a significant part of the Gallery, and contains rare illustrated editions and more than 7,000 volumes mainly on Art History, as well as the artist’s Photography archive, with a wealth of material that has undergone classification.

The National Bank of Greece supports the operation of Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika Gallery