Description
The Cyprus Collection of the A. G. Leventis Foundation began to be assembled in the early 1990s. The late Anastasios G. Leventis had already bequeathed to the Foundation the two collections he had gathered during his lifetime, the Paris Collection and the Greek Collection. The Foundation’s Board of Trustees aspired to create a gallery in Cyprus where those two collections could be housed in a permanent space designed especially for them.
It was equally important, however, that in this new museum, which would essentially present the development of European art from the 16th century to the mid-20th, Cypriot artistic creation would also coexist. Thus, from 1990 a small, representative collection of works by the most important artists of our time began to be assembled. It would express and exemplify the first generation of Cypriot artists.
A valuable addition to this Collection of the pioneers and innovators of Cypriot art is the monumental work The World of Cyprus by Adamantios Diamantis. The painting, which belongs to the Teloglion Foundation of Art at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, was moved to Nicosia on permanent loan within the framework of the agreement between the A. G. Leventis Foundation and the Teloglion Foundation for the exchange of exhibitions, artworks and educational and research programmes.
The Cyprus Collection offers the opportunity to visitors of the A. G. Leventis Gallery to be introduced to the early Cypriot artists: their creativity and their love of painting was so great that, in hard times, in the early 20th century, they studied the fine arts abroad, returned home and laid the foundation for contemporary Cypriot art.
