Cyprus College of Art - History

History

The Cyprus College of Art was founded in 1969 by the Cypriot painter Stass Paraskos, and is the oldest art college on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. It has two campuses, one in Lempa near Paphos and the other Larnaca.

The college was originally based in the town of Famagusta but, after the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, it was forced to move to the town of Kato Paphos. It remained there until 1985, when the Cyprus Ministry of Education granted it use of a former school building in the village of Lempa, four kilometres north of Paphos. The first programme offered by the college was the Cyprus Summer School, now renamed the Cyprus Summer Studio, which gave mainly British and Irish art students an opportunity to spend a period of time making art in Cyprus. In the early 1970s the college intended to launch a postgraduate fine art programme, but this was delayed by the Turkish invasion in 1974, and did not start until 1978.

In 2002 the College gained additional premises in Limassol and it used this as an opportunity to launch several undergraduate fine art programmes. This included foundation, adult education and degree courses in painting, sculpture, photography and printmaking. Almost all of the programmes taught at the College follow a British art education model, and several are validated in the United Kingdom by the British validation agency Ascentis. In 2007 the College's Limassol site was closed and teaching transferred to a new building in Larnaca, a city located on the south-east coast of Cyprus. The site at Lempa concentrates on postgraduate programmes and Larnaca on foundation and undergraduate programmes. Both sites are also used to house visiting artists from around the world.

In 2010 the College formed the Cornaro Institute, named after the last Venetian Queen of Cyprus Caterina Cornaro, to take over the College in Larnaca. This is likely to happen in 2011.

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