The Mona Lisa Project

12 Aug 2021 - 26 Aug 2021

Skoufa Gallery is pleased to present “The Mona Lisa Project”, a group show featuring 11 contemporary artists who create their own version of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, maybe, the most recognizable and famous works of art in the world.

The exhibition will be on view 12-26 August in our Mykonos Gallery.

Throughout the years many artists have felt compelled to create their own personal re-interpretations of the iconic “Mona Lisa”. Mona Lisa replicas were already being painted during Leonardo’s lifetime by his own students, and probably, no other painting has been more imitated and satirized than the well-beloved “Mona Lisa”.
Now over five-hundred years since her creation, the perpetuation of Mona Lisa’s influence is reinforced with every reinterpretation. Beginning possibly with a naked portrait of Diane de Poitiers by Clouet, the pose and expression have been freely adapted to many female portraits. The avant-garde art world has made note of the undeniable fact of the Mona Lisa’s popularity. Because of the painting’s overwhelming stature, Dadaists and Surrealists often produce modifications and caricatures. Already in 1883, Le rire, an image of a Mona Lisa smoking a pipe, by Sapeck (Eugène Bataille), was shown at the “Incoherents” show in Paris.
In 1919, Marcel Duchamp, one of the most influential modern artists, created L.H.O.O.Q., a Mona Lisa parody made by adorning a cheap reproduction with a moustache and a goatee, as well as adding the rude inscription, when read out loud in French sounds like “Elle a chaud au cul” literally translated: “she has a hot ass”. This is a manner of implying the woman in the painting is in a state of sexual excitement and availability.
Salvador Dali, famous for his surrealist work, painted a self-portrait as Mona Lisa in 1954.
In 1963 following the painting’s visit to the United States, Andy Warhol created serigraph prints of multiple Mona Lisas called Thirty are Better than One.

For this exhibition, we invite 11 contemporary artists to produced derivative works, manipulating Mona Lisa’s image to suit their own aesthetic for a summer group show in Skoufa Gallery Mykonos.

Participating Artists: ALEXANDROS MAGANIOTIS, KONSTANTINOS PATSIOS, STAMATIS THEOHARIS, TASOS PAVLOPOULOS, CONSTANTINOS PAPAMICHALOPOULOS, PATRICK RUBINSTEIN, LABRINI BOVIATSOU, VIVI PAPADIMITRIOU, TZENI SARIDI, FOTIS VARTHIS, DIMITRIS DOKOS