The Deputy Ministry of Culture, the Department of Contemporary Culture and its staff express their deepest sorrow for the loss of Eleni Nikita, who passed away on Saturday, April 20, 2024.
In its announcement, the Deputy Ministry of Culture states that Eleni Nikita, director of the former Cultural Services (now Department of Contemporary Culture), served culture with passion and consistency from many important positions, supported the artistic community with deep concern for the problems and challenges she faces, while she was the founder of a significant number of institutions in the field of modern culture.
As he notes “he acted with courage and inspiration, always open to challenges, even at personal cost, in order to achieve the necessary improvements in the field of modern culture”, to add that ” Eleni Nikita's rare gift of combining an eternal adolescent soul with a literally motherly love for the people of culture and their achievements earned her the appreciation and admiration of her artists and collaborators”.
“Her scientific training”, he says, “her studies and publications, helped the most in the development of research in the field of visual arts, and not only.
Eleni Nikita was born in Nicosia. He studied social sciences at the University of Geneva and later received a PhD in Art History with a thesis on the life and work of Adamantios Diamantis. She worked at the Center for Social Research and later at the Educational Service/Cultural Services, of the Ministry of Education and Culture, from 1977 to 2009. She was director of the Cultural Services from 2003 to 2009.
He was for many years the representative of the Ministry of Education and Culture in the Culture Committee of the Council of Europe and in various committees of the European Union. He was also Secretary General of the Cyprus National Commission for UNESCO from 2001 to 2009.
He was the author of many books. Her book “Christophoros Savva, the beginning of a new era in Cypriot art” was awarded the 2009 State Prize for Literature in the essay-research category.
He was honored by the Gallic government with the Knight of the Order of the Academic Phoenix and by the Austrian government with the Cross of Honor for Arts and Sciences. He was a member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) and the Society of Art Historians of Greece. Since 2012 she collaborated with the Leventios Gallery as curator of the Cypriot collection of the A. G. LEVENTIS Foundation.
Through her own efforts, Cypriot contemporary art acquires a systematic and substantial pace and presence in the major centers of promotion of contemporary culture, such as the Venice Biennale, while, among others, it will place Cyprus among the founding members of the Biennale of Young Creators of Europe and the Mediterranean.
According to the Deputy Ministry of Culture, Eleni Nikita's contribution to the development of modern Cypriot culture was “enormous and decisive”, since as an art historian she managed to shed light on important aspects of the Visual Arts in Cyprus, leaving behind a diverse corpus work which, by general admission, is, for younger researchers, a key point of reference in this field and a starting point for new approaches and interpretations.
Source: KYPE
p>
