Intention 2
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Intention 2
Spyropoulos, Jannis (1912 Pylos, Messinia - 1990 Athens)
He attended the Athens School of Fine Arts, studying under Spyros Vikatos, Umvertos Argyros and Epameinondas Thomopoulos (1933-1938). Thanks to a scholarship from the Academy of Athens, he went to Paris in 1938 and continued his studies at the School of Fine Arts under Charles Guerin, as well as in private schools. He returned to Greece in 1940 and, a short while later, he began to present his works in solo, group and international exhibitions in Greece and abroad (Alexandria Biennale 1955, Sao Paolo Biennale 1957, Kassel documenta 1964 and 1975). In 1960 he won the UNESCO Prize at the 30th Venice Biennale. In 1961 he was awarded the Gold Medal of the City of Ostende in Belgium, in 1966 the medal of the Order of the Phoenix in Athens and in 1978 the Gottfried von Herder Prize in Vienna. In November 1990, only a few months after his death, the Jannis and Zoe Spyropoulos Foundation was formed, with the mission to collect, study, present and make good use of the paintings of Jannis Spyropoulos, as well as to support young painters. 1992 marked the inauguration of the Ekali house-museum, which is dedicated to the painter’s artistic career, as well as the year that the J. Spyropoulos Prize for talented young visual artists was awarded for the first time. In 1994, a retrospective exhibition of the artist’s work was organized by the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art and, a year later, by the Greek National Gallery.
“A Classicist of Abstraction”, Spyropoulos followed a consistent path in the development of his morphoplastic quests, proceeding from pictorial to reductive rendering and then, finally, to pure abstraction. From the teachings of Cezanne and the schematicized form, he moved on to geometric structure and construction by means of color, to gradually employ the combined use of heterogeneous materials and the oil painting technique in juxtapositions of large dark and smaller luminous color surfaces, culminating in the limpidity and esotericism of his later-day works on paper.
Streaks and spots emerging through dense or sparse darkness, expanses of intensely earthy color, imprints of lines, thick or thin textures, rich and often mysterious, collages and brushstrokes that seem to not have been created by human hand, are the elements that characterize the abstract works of Jannis Spyropoulos. The implicit silence that his works command is broken by the careful and dispassionate observation of the dramatic painting events. The cryptic, insinuative titles constitute the guiding thread for understanding the events and are revealed as the reconciliation of the profane with the reflection on what lies beyond reality.
Intention 2 complements concepts such as those of light, of the wear and the presence of time, of that which remains, calling on painting itself to interpret the Universe under an inner light that is emerging from within the densest questions.
Hence, Spyropoulos contributed not only to a Greek abstract idiom that has been acknowledged as an important contribution to the painting language of abstraction, but also to a personal iconography of the profane and the sacred.
WorkOfArt RelatedInfo
ECard
- Χρονολογία: 1964
- Υλικό: Μικτή τεχνική σε μουσαμά
- Διαστάσεις: 97,5 x 162 cm
- Αρ. Έργου: Π.3073
Π.Ε.Π. ΙΟΝΙΩΝ ΝΗΣΩΝ
