Greek Art

Greek art is mainly in four forms: architecture, sculpture, painting, and painted pottery.

Architecture includes houses, religious buildings like temples and tombs, and public building like city walls, theaters, stadia, and stoas.

Sculpture includes small figurines and life-size statues, but also relief sculptures which were on the sides of buildings, and also tombstones.

We have very little Greek painting from the Classical period; most of what we have is from the Bronze Age. The paintings were painted on walls, as decoration for rooms, like murals or wallpaper. On the other hand, we have a good deal of painted pottery from all periods of Greek history (down to the Hellenistic).

To find out more about Greek art, check out these books from Amazon.com or your library:

Ancient Greek Art, by Susie Hodge (1998)- for kids ages 9-12.

Greek Art and Archaeology (3rd Edition), by John G. Pedley (2002) This is NOT a children's book, but it has a lot of good information and is pretty readable. Plus, the author is really an expert in this field.

The Archaeology of Greece: An Introduction, by William R. Biers (revised edition 1996) Like Pedley's book, this is NOT a children's book, but Biers writes very clearly and has a lot of good pictures.
 

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