Tehni was established in 1951 in Thessaloniki with the aim of cultivating and disseminating art and literature in Thessaloniki and the rest of northern Greece. It may be considered to have been successful, since it helped to found the State Orchestra of Thessaloniki, the Film Festival, and the State Theatre of Northern Greece, and assisted the decentralisation of art by setting up similar associations in provincial towns. Since the end of 1999, Tehni has occupied a restored listed building next to the Byzantine walls in Ano Poli, Thessaloniki’s Upper Town.

It is active in a variety of ways in Thessaloniki’s artistic life, and visual expression is only one aspect. More specifically, Tehni runs a film club, a youth centre, a theatre workshop, a music workshop, and a lending library specialising in music and drama. The Tehni art gallery consists of a collection of important paintings by 75 contemporary Greek painters and a collection of 370 engravings representative of Greek output in the 20^th century.

The paintings are not on permanent display, owing to lack of space. However, the association continues its visual arts activity with exhibitions in Thessaloniki and northern Greece. In 1999, the engravings, grouped in four generations (1879–1967), were exhibited in Thessaloniki (Vafopoulos Cultural Centre and Neapoli Town Hall), Florina, and Kavala.