The Pioneer Group is a term used by scholars for a number of vase painters working in the potters' quarter of

Kerameikos Kerameikos (, ) also known by its latinization of names, Latinized form Ceramicus, is an area of Athens, Greece, located to the northwest of the Acropolis, Athens, Acropolis, which includes an extensive area both within and outside the ancient ci ...

in ancient Athens around the beginning of the

5th century BC The 5th century BC started the first day of 500 BC and ended the last day of 401 BC. This century saw the establishment of Pataliputra as a capital of the Magadha (Mahajanapada), Magadha Empire. This city would later become the ruling capital o ...

, around the time of the emergence of

red-figure Red-figure pottery () is a style of Pottery of ancient Greece, ancient Greek pottery in which the background of the pottery is painted black while the figures and details are left in the natural red or orange color of the clay. It developed in A ...

vase painting, which soon displaced the previously dominant

black-figure Black-figure pottery painting (also known as black-figure style or black-figure ceramic; ) is one of the styles of Ancient Greek vase painting, painting on pottery of ancient Greece, antique Greek vases. It was especially common between the 7th a ...

style. Described by the British art historian John Boardman as perhaps the first conscious

art movement An art movement is a tendency or style in art with a specific art philosophy or goal, followed by a group of artists during a specific period of time, (usually a few months, years or decades) or, at least, with the heyday of the movement defined ...

in the western tradition, historians had included a number of artists in the group, including Epiktetos,

Euphronios Euphronios (; c. 535 – after 470 BC) was an ancient Greek vase painter and potter, active in Athens in the late 6th and early 5th centuries BC. As part of the so-called " Pioneer Group," (a modern name given to a group of vase painters who we ...

, Euthymides, Oltos, Phintias, Smikros, Hypsis, and the Dikaios Painter. Archaeologist

John Beazley Sir John Davidson Beazley (; 13 September 1885 – 6 May 1970) was a British classical archaeologist and art historian, known for his classification of Attic vases by artistic style. He was professor of classical archaeology and art at the U ...

was the first to identify these artists as a coherent group in his works published in the 1940s, in which he developed a taxonomy of

ancient Greek pottery Pottery, due to its relative durability, comprises a large part of the archaeological record of ancient Greece, and since there is so much of it (over 100,000 painted vases are recorded in the Corpus vasorum antiquorum), it has exerted a dispro ...

by style. No documentary evidence remains of the artists, and everything we know about them was deduced from their surviving work. The Pioneer Group were not innovators of the red-figure technique but rather late adopters of the practice developed by bilingual vase painters such as Andokides and Psiax, who produced pottery featuring both the black-figure and red-figure techniques. Coming some ten years after the earliest work in red-figure style, Euphronios' first works are thought to have been produced circa 520 BC. As a group, their work makes frequent reference to one another, often in a playful competitive spirit; Euthymides boasts on one of his signed pots (Munich 2307): ''hos oudepote Euphronios'' ("as never Euphronios"). Their work is distinctive for its simple rendering of dress, bold handling of anatomy, experimental use of

foreshortening Linear or point-projection perspective () is one of two types of 3D projection, graphical projection perspective in the graphic arts; the other is parallel projection. Linear perspective is an approximate representation, generally on a fla ...

and a thematic preference for representations of symposia.

References

* R. T. Neer. ''Styles and Politics in Athenian Vase Painting: The Craft of Democracy, ca. 530–470 BCE''. Cambridge University Press, 2002. * John Boardman. ''Athenian Red Figure Vases: The Archaic Period: A Handbook.'' London: Thames and Hudson, 1975. {{Authority control Ancient Greek vase painters Anonymous artists of antiquity Year of birth unknown