A Visual Tribute to Andrei Tarkovsky’s Artwork by the OCHRE group

On the occasion of the planned tribute of the philosophical magazine Anthropos* to the Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky in autumn 2023, the magazine is organizing an art exhibition this coming Fall in Athens dedicated to Tarkovsky. A number of the films of this Russian film director (Ivan's Childhood, Andrei Rublev, Solaris, Mirror, Stalker, Nostalghia, The Sacrifice) rank among the best movies ever made. The Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman was quoted as saying: “Tarkovsky for me is the greatest [of us all], the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream.” The Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa remarked on Tarkovsky's films as saying: “His unusual sensitivity is both overwhelming and astounding. Probably there is no equal among film directors alive now.”

A group of painters who love Tarkovsky’s artwork are inspired by his movies, the atmosphere, the photography, his poetry, his existential anxieties, his philosophy and also by the personality of the director himself who left a clear and powerful imprint on European culture in the twentieth century in the way it writes and thinks, the way it reacts and engages with “the world.”

The core of the group of painters is the OCHRE group which last year had a dedicated exhibition to Dostoevsky in the USA and Serbia.

The exhibition will take place first in Athens at a gallery that will be announced soon and will also be moved to the USA and, possibly, other places in the world.

Number of paintings: 35

The artists participating alphabetically are: Fotis Varthis, Bishop Maxim Vasiljevic, Charalambos Epaminondas, George Kordis, Konstantinos Kouyoumtzis, Kostas Lavdas, Giannoulis Lymberopoulos, Nektarios Mamais, Christina Papatheou – Douligeri, Konstantinos Papargyris, Babis Pilarinos, Gordana Radojevic, Father Stamatis Skliris, Nektarios Stamatelos.

Curation and organization of the exhibition in Greece: Babis Pilarinos (info@pilarinos.gr), member of the editorial board of the magazine Anthropos and the Ochre group.

*Anthropos (Human in Greek) magazine highlights and discusses issues and questions related to philosophy, theology, philology, literature and the other arts, as well as moral problems of wider significance. The editor is Michalis Pangalos, a professor at the Athens School of Philosophy.

Meet The OCHRE Group

Ochre is a group of contemporary painters whose members share a love of the art of iconography and its centuries-long history, regardless of whether that love is expressed though what is called the art of Byzantine painting, or through other styles of painting.

The primary aim of the participants in this group is to enter into a creative dialogue with the visual and theological body of the art of iconography, with the ultimate goal of creating contemporary icons able to function within the sphere of Christian worship and to meet the needs of the faithful.

At the same time, since the members of this group believe that ecclesiastical art, like every aspect of the life of the Church, can be expressed in a multitude of ways, which, however, are connected by a shared logos, the members of Ochre maintain that the tradition of the art of iconography also affords a range of possibilities for the creation of paintings that are not necessarily restricted to ecclesiastical themes.