Dimitris daskalopoulos biography of martin
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Maybe the business was a refuge from my passion for art, who knows? That year you bought a replica of Marcel Duchamp’s original “Fountain” at auction for 1.76 million dollars. In any case, no matter what you do and how much you can invest in art, you are only making a small imprint in some little corner of this huge universe of creativity.
You have no need to be surrounded with artwork in your everyday life? In 2013, he founded NEON, a nonprofit organization working to bring contemporary Greek culture closer to everyone. In auction houses, artists’ studios, galleries etc?
DIMITRIS DASKALOPOULOS
Everywhere.
The emotion that art can generate is everywhere here – in the heart, the lungs, the stomach, in the center.
DIMITRIS DASKALOPOULOS
UNA MEISTERE
Some collectors compare this process to hunting.
I think we all make mistakes and there are better collections and worse collections, but in the end it’s the collector’s ability to decide between things.
Those things are much less important for me. Much more than it is today.
UNA MEISTERE
Do you think art nowadays has the power to change something in society?
DIMITRIS DASKALOPOULOS
Yes. And Mozart, who was asked to write one symphony for this emperor and another symphony for that aristocrat.
Because, you know, I seek the power in the artwork itself. Otherwise go surfing.
UNA MEISTERE
Is there any piece of art you wished you had in your collection but couldn’t afford?
DIMITRIS DASKALOPOULOS
(Laughs) Many things. I feel that I have an interest and the financial means to put together a good expression of the creativity of other people, and for me it’s there to be shown, to be loaned, to be open to the public.
To continue towards other expressions of contemporary creativity. As years went by, he visited more museums and bought his first artwork, a small bronze statue, on a trip through Thailand when he was eighteen.
As he stated in an interview with Art Territory, during the first stages of his long-lasting journey as an art collector, he focused on Greek painting from the 1950s, and only turned to international contemporary art in the early 1990s when he was forty.
It’s the same with art. The conceptual foundation of his collection has been influenced by the works of Greek philosopher Nikos Kazantzakis, who spoke of life as a “luminous interval” between birth and death and the human body at its center as a “source of creativity and the vessel of existential, social and ideological struggle”.
Large installations and sculptures make up the majority of works in the D.Daskalopoulos Collection, although it also contains drawings, collages, films and video.
While reflecting on key aesthetic developments over the last quarter-century, the collection also includes pieces from the early 20th century such as works by Marina Abramović, Joseph Beuys, Gilbert and George, Robert Morris, and Dieter Roth. We all interpret it in a different way, it means different things to us. Otherwise, I do not trade in art.
UNA MEISTERE
How have you trained yourself to distinguish good art from bad art?
Maybe through collecting you are trying to find the answers?
DIMITRIS DASKALOPOULOS
My business life has been one of constant progress. At the beginning of his career as an art collector, he concentrated on Greek painting from the 1950s, and he only turned to contemporary art in the early 1990s at the age of forty.
I met Daskalopoulos in central Athens and immediately he speaks openly, slowly, deliberately and very constructively, as if he has already formulated his answers to most of life’s questions long ago.
It's available to museums, for loans, and I give it out as much as I can.
DIMITRIS DASKALOPOULOS
UNA MEISTERE
That is the difference between you and another Greek art collector, Mr Dakis Joannou, who has a beautiful house full of artwork, which I visited just yesterday.
Especially when I decide to move on with an artist and in that way I get better works by that artist.