Nikos Kessanlis Greek, 1930-2004

Radical and innovative, Nikos Kessanlis belongs to that generation of Greek artists who were the first to attempt a dynamic change in art, an opening up to the contemporary international scene. A direct participant in European artistic developments since the '50s, Kessanlis, through his work, has renewed the discourse of the Greek visual arts.

His move to Paris in 1960 brought him into contact with the Nouveaux Realistes, a group of artists whose aim was to renew the language of visual art by introducing the contemporary iconography of the mass media and artefacts of industrial culture into art. Their activities included happenings, collages, and assemblages. Kessanlis' works from the series Gestures and Walls are based on the use of a medley of disparate worn-out materials and rubbish, newspapers, paper, and so forth, put together in distinctive collages, either monochrome and austere or overloaded with successive layers of materials and paint. They experiment with the relationship between the object and the painted surface and between the material and the gesture, and were the preliminary to his abandoning painting and moving on to three-dimensional works that approached the rationale of ready-mades, such as those he presented in Nouvelles aventures de l'objet (Paris, 1961). Wire mesh and crumpled paper were released into the space and left to their own devices. From then until 1963, Kessanlis's technique consisted in the use of 'worthless materials' (barbed wire, cloth, paper, wood, plaster, worn-out metal objects).