Polykleitos Regos Exhibition

It is an honor for the visual arts events of the Vafopoulio Cultural Center and more broadly for the Municipality of Thessaloniki to host the tribute exhibition to Polykleitos Regos (1903-1984) at the 60th “Dimitria” Festival in 2025, forty-one years after his passing. Regos, described as the “patriarch of painting in Northern Greece” by the academic and art historian Chrysanthos Christou and a personal friend of the late Giorgos Vafopoulos, inaugurated the Vafopoulio Cultural Center in 1983 with a retrospective exhibition of Regos’ work.

The works to be exhibited -oils, drawings, and engravings- date from the period 1930-1935, during which Regos studied in Paris, at the Louvre, and at the two academies Ecole de la Grande Chaumière and Colarossi.

These works constitute a group of copies of pieces by pre-Renaissance and Renaissance creators, which the family has never exhibited, preserving them as unique relics.

France opened up a multitude of perspectives for him in the fields of research and inquiry, the enrichment of knowledge, and even philosophical thought surrounding the endeavor of the art of painting.
Grounded in the classical world, within the later renewed world of his creations, one can discern the experiences of this five-year period, along with the constant presence of Byzantine art, which also stood as a pillar throughout his long artistic journey
(Elli Kokkini Kaplani, Art Historian, Art Critic).