Byzantium: The Origins

Please Click Here to Visit the Virtual Viewing Room. This virtual exhibit will be on view for 3 days only from November 4th - 6th, 2020.

The Art of Byzantium is one of the most mysterious and fascinating in the European culture. For many centuries the Art of Byzantium was considered barbaric and ultrareligious. The Byzantine Empire began in 324 when the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great founded Byzantium, the capital of Eastern Roman Empire. Since then, the art of Byzantium started to separate from classical traditions of Greece and Rome. Constantine the Great chose Christianity to be the official religion of the empire. The goal of the state and its artists was to express Christian ideas through Great art whose purpose was to help people survive, live, and have hope in the times of cruelties and sufferings. The general stylization and flattening of forms, which heightens the expression of intense spirituality – these are the main features of Byzantine Art.

Artists Jenny Belotserkovsky ad Michal Tavrovsky conveyed the spirit of Byzantium using modern art – abstract and precise. They were successful in doing it with great care and awe, following the same tradition – to give people hope, and love, and peace.