Reconsidering the Generation of the 1930s: The Roots and Breadth of Greek Modernism, UCLA SNF Center for the Study of Hellenic Culture, November 18, 2023

This conference challenges the attribution of the term “Generation of the 1930s” (Γενιά του ’30) to artists and writers active during the 1930s and the following decades. The term initially addressed a group of writers and poets bound by similar experiences and socio-historical backgrounds. However, between 1948-50, artists were also clustered under the term, which literati employed regularly––and still do––in scholarship. These artists were credited with the creation of modernism in Greece, which was inspired by Western European movements but was also deeply rooted in history, particularly in Orthodox Byzantium. 

The conference explores the various poles of artistic inventiveness during the 1930s but also examines the work of these artists and writers throughout the twentieth century, prompting us to conceive their work diachronically rather than within the confines of a single decade. Given the socio-political circumstances of the nineteenth century in Greece (the traumatic changes resulting from the Greco-Turkish war, the ensuing population exchange, the collapse of the Megali Idea, the dramatic upheavals of interwar Greece, the Metaxas dictatorship, and the Junta regime), the conference examines transnational and cosmopolitan orientations within Greek modernism and the ways in which these intertwined with narratives of nationality and folklore.

Organized by Gefyra (Bridge), a collaborative program established by the UCLA SNF Center for the Study of Hellenic Culture and the SNF Centre for Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University with support from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF).