Wow! Pow! Bam! Comics and Painting:
A Meeting at the End of the 20th Century

Wow! Pow! Bam! Comics and Painting: A Meeting at the End of the 20th Century explored the enduring exchange between comics and contemporary painting, focusing on the ways artists draw on the visual and narrative conventions of comics while moving across the traditional divide between so-called high and low art.

The exhibition followed two parallel developments from the 1960s onward: painters incorporating elements of mass culture and comics into their work, and comics artists drawing on Modern Art and art-school practices. It also focused on the Greek scene of the 1980s, when magazines such as Babel and Para Pente became important spaces for experimentation between comics, graphic language and painting.

Curator

Spyros Verykios

Theoretical framework & exhibition text

Thanasis Moutsopoulos

Venue

Zoumboulakis Gallery, Athens

Dates

6 June – 20 July 2024

Organisation & production

Zoumboulakis Gallery — Daphne Zoumboulaki, Anastasia Protopapa, Niki Papakonstantinopoulou, Michalis Chorianopoulos

Artists

Diamantis Aidinis, Spyros Verykios, Steve Giannakos, Konstantinos Lianos, Christos Mavrodis, Christos Michaelides, Emmanouil Bitsakis, Bost, Dimitris Papaioannou, Konstantinos Papamichalopoulos, Keith Haring, Steven C. Harvey, Hergé, Roy Lichtenstein, Javier Mayoral, Raymond Pettibon