Spyros Papaloukas Greek, 1882-1957

Private Collection, Athens

Mount Athos, the holy mount, is the only place in Greece entirely devoted to prayer and the worship of God. Set on a peninsula of extraordinary natural beauty, Mount Athos attracted painters as well as worshippers. Having initially trained as an apprentice to an icon painter, Papaloukas returned to Mount Athos in 1923 to recover from his experiences as a war artist in the Greek army during the Asia Minor campaign, to further his studies of Byzantine iconography, and to paint the local scenery.

The traumatic experience of the Asia Minor Campaign had created a need for national self-affirmation, which was expressed in literature and the visual arts through a turn to tradition. A member of the Generation of the Thirties, Papaloukas was no exception and sought comfort in a return to the Byzantine tradition, however, he strove to combine it with modern contemporary ideas on painting. While he did paint out of doors, his plein air paintings were by no means realistic depictions of the scenery at hand. Instead, works such as The Monastery of Docheiariou, Mount Athos are characterised by powerful schematisation both in composition and drawing, and a more 'spiritual' use of colour, and combined influences from Greek antiquity, Byzantium and the modern trends.

For Papaloukas, as for many artists of the Generation of the Thirties, tradition and modernism functioned as two-way catalysts. Each one was of assistance in the deeper understanding and appreciation of the other.