Lot 7
  • 7

Spyros Papaloukas Greek, 1882-1957

Estimate
35,000 - 45,000 GBP
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Description

  • Spyros Papaloukas
  • Houses in the Hills
  • signed l.c.
  • oil on board
  • 20.5 by 24.5cm., 8 by 9¾in.

Provenance

Estate of the artist
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Catalogue Note

After his return from Paris in 1921, Papaloukas focused on painting the landscape and people of his homeland. In these paintings he increasingly experimented with colours, applied boldly with flat patterns into linear arrangements of vibrant planes. The interpretation of space, colour, light and tonal contrast were a particular concern for the artist. To Papaloukas, artistic creation centered on two elements: shape and colour, and he maintained that art meant "interpreting the hidden connection between objects, the unity of the world, which it is the task of every artist and craftsman to comprehend and to make visible to others by means of its pure elements, that is to say, in the case of a painter by means of form and colour" (quoted by Marina Lambraki-Plaka in 'The Credo of Spyros Papaloukas', Zygos, Athens, 1983, pp. 49-50). To Papaloukas, the artist is a creator, just as nature is: in his representation of nature, the artist therefore has the right to depict his own individual vision of it.

Papaloukas' love of nature, and of man's manifestation therein, thus determined his subject matter. Whilst expressing his feeling of communion with nature through a rational pictorial interpretation of it, he nevertheless strove to "reconstitute the reality of nature aesthetically in accordance with my own harmonies of colour and form, re-creating nature through perception rather than making a lifeless copy of it" (ibid. p. 55). This idea was certainly inspired by the maxims of modern French painting of the Cubists, Impressionists, Nabis and Fauves, which Papaloukas had encountered in Paris during his sojourn there in 1917-21. Combining these French influences with the Byzantine iconographic tradition, Papaloukas created works that are highly personal and expressive. His canvases, artistic transmutations of the world around him, became a vehicle for expressing his artistic freedom.