The history of art in Greece has specific spatial and chronological boundaries and includes the development of visual arts from the 18th century to the early decades of the 21st century. The corresponding term for European art has much broader limits, as it encompasses the Western Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and of course, modern and contemporary art.

The criteria used to define each period, e.g., classical, Byzantine, or modern, are specific and relate to historical, stylistic, cultural, and other characteristics, as well as to the application of a methodology that responds to the needs of a science with particular epistemological features. For modern Greek art, the rule by which one measures the elements that place art within a historical context draws from the Renaissance and is accelerated depending on the conditions under which the artwork changes and evolves.

For the author of this study, the reasons and causes of all kinds of changes, such as those in morphology, as well as those related to the awakening of the national consciousness of the new Hellenism, are the main pillars determining the boundaries of modern Greek art. Therefore, the 18th century was chosen as the starting point, as it encapsulates these specific characteristics.

Strong Greek communities, whether formed in mainland Greece and the Ionian Islands or abroad, played a decisive role in changing ideological models and in searching for examples from both the West and the East. In any case, and based on historical events, Greek societies had solidified the Western way of thinking and, influenced by external factors, gave a modern character to artistic expression.

Regarding the evolution of art from the 20th century to the 21st, it coincided with the transition from modernism to postmodernism, characterized by absolute freedom in the use of media and materials. It was a return to reality and social events, after a long attachment to self-referential practices and morphological choices towards a specific style.

Tradition and everything associated with it were abandoned in favor of concepts and ideas that go beyond the material form of the artwork. In this course, the processing of the “image” in its purest form will emerge from digital art, which will eliminate analog processes, confront spatial “infinity,” explore the temporal limits of the image, and reveal a new world whose implications are still being recorded, opening a new cycle of questions around issues of aesthetics, art commerce, collecting practices, and the perception of contemporary artworks.