- documenta
- documenta archiv
Greek curator and art theorist Denys Zacharopoulos died in Athens on October 3 at the age of 74. In 1992, he was part of the curatorial team for documenta 9, alongside Bart de Baere and Pier Luigi Tazzi, under the direction of Artistic Director Jan Hoet.
As a leading, internationally connected voice in contemporary art, he was one of the most influential figures in Greece’s art and museum scene. The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOMus) in Thessaloniki, which he directed from 2006 to 2015, honors him as “a great, unyielding intellectual with a deeply humanistic education and a strong social and political conscience, who constantly redefined our view of the world.”
His professional journey began with playing the piano: Zacharopoulos first studied musicology and composition in Athens, then turned to literary studies in Aix-en-Provence, and finally to sociology and philosophy at the EHESS in Paris. In his adopted home of France, however, he initially steered clear of art history: it seemed to him, as he himself put it, too academic.
Instead, his path to documenta led through art criticism. Beginning in the 1980s, he made a name for himself as a writer, including as the France correspondent for Artforum (1983–1990). In addition to curating exhibitions as a freelance curator, he taught in the 1980s and 1990s at the École du Magasin in Grenoble, one of the first training programs for curators in Europe.
Following documenta 9, he took over as director of the Domaine de Kerguéhennec sculpture park in Brittany, where he shaped the program and direction as director until 1999. That same year, he served as curator of the French Pavilion at the Venice Biennale before returning to Greece after spending some thirty years in France.
His curatorial work was always complemented by teaching. In the 1980s and early 1990s, he taught at the Geneva University of Art and Design, the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam, and the Bern University of the Arts. From 1992 to 1996, he was an honorary professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, where he also headed the Institute for Contemporary Art. Later, he taught art history and museology at the University of the Aegean. The Athens School of Fine Arts honored him with an honorary doctorate for his scholarly and cultural contributions.
