Frozen

It's been so cold recently! We had a bit of snow, lots of frost and it reached -6oC the other night. The temperatures have eased up a bit, but we were surprised to see that the river Leam was still frozen the other day when we went for a walk in the park. I took this photograph from the bridge by the weir.

We then walked on to Wills Rd, stood on this bridge,

 the whole of the river, frozen.

I thought I could see skating on the field that floods on the other side of the road, and indeed, two people were playing ice hockey on the frozen flooded bits.

The iris in Jephson Gardens, in flower

The pond, frozen

Yannis Spyropoulos - Juvenilia

Yannis Spyropoulos - Juvenilia at the Benaki Museum, Pireos, Athens.

This exhibition covered the work of eleven Greek artists who were influenced by the major events of the 20th century: WWII, the occupation of Greece by the Germans and the famine that ensued; the Civil War that followed the end of the war, and how it divided the nation; finally the seven years of the military dictatorship that brought so much suffering to the Greek people. 

In the exhibition we were shown how each artist's work developed and changed as they matured and how some moved on to abstraction. I will cover the work of one artist in each post.

Spyropoulos is an artist I had not come across before, but I like his abstract compositions. 

Writings II, 1957, (oil on paper)

In the Forest VI, 1958, (oil on canvas)

Dancers C, 1956, (oil on canvas)

Return H, 1965, (mixed media on canvas)

Ithaka B, 1959, (oil on paper)

Lindos No. 2, 1959, (oil on canvas)

Prologue D, 1964, (mixed media on canvas)

Anafiotika, A-IV, 1957, (oil on hardboard)

Ladders III, 1955, (oil on hardboard)

Ladder, 1985, (mixed media on paper)


 

Yannis Tsarouchis - Juvenilia

This exhibition covered the work of eleven Greek artists who were influenced by the major events of the 20th century: WWII, the occupation of Greece by the Germans and the famine that ensued; the Civil War that followed the end of the war, and how it divided the nation; finally the seven years of the military dictatorship that brought so much suffering to the Greek people. 

In the exhibition we were shown how each artist's work developed and changed as they matured and how some moved on to abstraction. I will cover the work of one artist in each post.

Yannis Tsarouchis at Juvenilia at Benaki Museum, Pireos, Athens.

One of the most important representatives of the 'Thirties Generation', Tsarouchis embodied in his work the ideal of 'Greekness'. A modernist painter and set designer, he created a unique personal style and depicted landscapes, still lifes, nudes and allegorical scenes. But his interest was primarily focused on the human figure, and is known for his homoerotic subjects, including, sailors, soldiers and nude young men. He was influenced by Byzantine iconography. His work moved in two main directions: toward the orientalist and sensual and toward the ancient Greek ideal.

He joined the struggle against the Italians trying to invade Greece in 1940. With a more political and humanist perspective after his military service, he began painting scenes of young men who were preparing to defend their homeland from the rise of Fascist Italy. Tsarouchis' depiction of the sailors and soldiers was controversial: some of his exhibits were taken down by censors who saw his work as unpatriotic and degrading to the Greek male image.

Most of the works in this exhibition are portraits of young men.

Still Life with Ruby Red Backgrouundk, 1934-35, (oil on plywood)

Evzone and Family, 1936, (mixed media on canvas)

Cyclist Dressed as Evzone with a Temple at the Bottom Right Corner of the Painting, 1936, (oil on canvas)

Youth in White Linen Suit, 1937, (pigments with animal glue on canvas)

The Thinker, 1936, (pigments with animal glue on paper)

A reference to Rodin's The Thinker - a modern young Greek sitting on a cafe stool, a cigarette in hand, with a faraway look in his eye.

Seated Dark-Haired Youth with a Topcoat, 1937, (pigments with animal glue on paper)

Youth Posing as a Statue from Olympia, 1939, (pigments with animal glue on canvas)

Italian Nude, seated in profile, 1937, (pigments with animal glue on paper)

Nude Youth with Oleanders and a Bandage on his Hand, 1940, (oil on canvas)

To see more of Tsarouchis' work you can go here

Vasso Katraki - Juvenilia

This exhibition covered the work of eleven Greek artists who were influenced by the major events of the 20th century: WWII, the occupation of Greece by the Germans and the famine that ensued; the Civil War that followed the end of the war, and how it divided the nation; finally the seven years of the military dictatorship that brought so much suffering to the Greek people. 

In the exhibition we were shown how each artist's work developed and changed as they matured and how some moved on to abstraction. I will cover the work of one artist in each post.

Vasso Katraki - Juvenilia at Benaki Museum, Pireos, Athens.

'I live and work with our fishermen, with our farmers, with the landscapes of my motherland, because they are as one with my soul. My constant contact with them helped me understand the material of my artistic creation'. Vasso Katraki.

Vasso Katraki, engraver and painter is renowned for her unique visual language and bold reflection on the human condition. In her art, the human body acquires a distinct symbolic, ideological and political quality, becoming a bearer of collective memory and trauma. Her monumental, elongated, rigid figures transcend mere representation and emerge stripped of any descriptive details, incorporating elements of pre-classical art (Cycladic, Archaic) coupled with modernism.

In her engravings, she initially used wood, a traditional material, but in the final 38 years of her career,  stone - and in particular sandstone - would play a key role in her work. Sandstone is a porous rock that has the capacity to filter and store large quantities of liquid. 

Katraki's earlier themes are very political. The War, the Occupation, the Resistance, and the Civil War take on a central role, with the fishermen of her hometown appearing in her work in the late 1940s, also featuring prominently in her stone engravings over the following decade. The same can also be said of her distinctive mother-figure. The artist became increasingly abstract: her forms ascetic and archetypal. Sterm female figures, bloody suns, wounded horses.

In 1967, the day after the military coup of April 21st, Katrakia was among the first people arrested. Like so many, she was exiled to the island of Gyaros, where she would remain for almost 10 months. Gyaros, or Yioura as the engraver and her fellow prisoners called this uninhabited island in the Cyclades, had served as a place of exile and punitive isolation since Roman times. It was under these conditions that the pebbles on the seashore were painted. The pebbles would be painted with suns or female figures, almost always smiling - a feature completely absent from her earlier female forms and from the later, almost formalistic figures that she would carve into stone during the period immediately after her inprisonment and exile. Katraki would send painted pebbles of girls and suns to her eight-year-old twin children - small offerings of hope and love.

I am sorry about the quality of the photographs. I tried taking them from all kinds of different angles, but unfortunately could not prevent reflections on some of the works.

Aetoliko, Summer 1942, (This is How the Germans Punish), 1942, (pencil on rice paper)

Athens 1944, 1952, (woodcut on rice paper)

Funeral During the Occupation, 1943, (woodcut on paper)

Demonstration during the Occupation, 1943, (woodcut on paper)

Women at the Olive Grove, 1941-42, (oil on canvas)

The Poor and Deadbeat life of Fishermen, 1950, (woodcut on paper)

detail

detail

detail

Representation, 1970, (engraving on stone)

Forest, 1972, (stone mold)





Aurae and Icarus, 1984, (engraving on stone)
 

To see more of Katrakis' work you can go here

Happy New Year

Happy New Year and all the best.

Yannis Moralis - Juvenilia

This exhibition covered the work of eleven Greek artists who were influenced by the major events of the 20th century: WWII, the occupation of Greece by the Germans and the famine that ensued; the Civil War that followed the end of the war, and how it divided the nation; finally the seven years of the military dictatorship that brought so much suffering to the Greek people. 

In the exhibition we were shown how each artist's work developed and changed as they matured and how some moved on to abstraction. I will cover the work of one artist in each post.

Yannis Moralis in Juvenilia at Benaki Museum, Pireos, Athens.

Yannis Moralis was a key figure of the 'Generation of the 1930s', a group of writers, poets and visual artists who were key in the development of Greek Modernism; by combining movements such as surrealism and abstraction with the vernacular style, they created a mix beguiling mix of innovation and tradition. These experiments coincided with a surge of hope and optimism in Greece, as the country emerged from the strife of WWII and the subsequent Greek Civil War which ended in 1949. The group also included Yannis Tsarouchis, Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika and Nikos Engonopoulos.

One of the recurrent motifs in Moralis' early work was the female nude. His detailed studies of the female form can be seen as a modern take on Ancient Greek beauty ideals which were so vividly captured in the classical sculptures and reliefs. From the late 1950s onwards, he started to incorporate abstraction into his figurative compositions. This was a gradual shift. Forms were repeatedly distilled until they blended into forms of great simplicity and precision. His late compositions were geometrical, painted in striking colours, their shapes totally deconstructed. Total abstraction.

Love - Hope, 1934, (woodcut on paper)

Love, Pleasure, Mother, 1933, (woodcut on wood)

Cafe, 1939, (woodcut on paper)

Nude, 1947, (oil on canvas)

Nude, 1939, (oil on canvas)

Seated Nude, 1952, (oil on canvas)

Portrait of the Painter Theodossios Christodoulou, 1939, (oil on canvas)

Portrait of Ioanna N. Lourou, 1949, (oil on canvas)

The Table, 1947, (oil on canvas)

Funerary Composition II, 1958-62, (oil on canvas)

Girl Painting, 1979, (oil on canvas)




 

The Island, 1976, (acrylic on canvas)

This is what Moralis gradually moved to, and this is the art he is associated with the most: abstract, austere, frugal style, dominated by flatness and a rendering of forms without tonal gradations, a two-dimensional view of space, and the absence of a light source. I love it.