Georgios Bouzianis

Dimitris Deligiannis, Bouzianis, Athens, 1996, p. 160, no. 229, illustrated

Bouzianis' subject-matter was restricted mainly to the human face and body. His intense distortions and violent colours attempted to express the artist's preoccupation with the sense of the tragic in life.

Bouzianis moved to Munich on a scholarship in 1907, following his graduation from the Higher School of Fine Arts in Athens the previous year. In Germany he studied under the German painter Walter Thor, and from 1908 onwards at the Akademie der bildenden Künste as a pupil of Otto Seitz and Georg Schildknecht. In 1909 he went to Berlin and worked for a year at the studio of the renowned German Impressionist painter Max Liebermann. On his return to Munich in 1910 he struck up a friendship with de Chirico. His output of this period consisted mainly of portraits, which he exhibited in Munich at the Kunstverein and the Künstler Genossenschaft, of which he soon became a member. Between 1917 and 1921 Bouzianis exhibited at the Galerie Anton Ritthaler, showing works in his new Expressionist style. From 1920 to 1932 he was supported by the Galerie Barchfeld of Leipzig, whose owner, Heinrich Barchfeld, built a studio for him in Eichenau. In 1927 he had his first one-man show at the Kunsthütte in Chemnitz. That same year he became a member of the Munich Secession and in 1928 he participated in their exhibition at the Glaspalast in Munich.

The critics reviewed his works enthusiastically and he sold most of his exhibits. Heinrich Barchfeld subsequently bankrolled a study trip to Paris, where Bouzianis lived between 1929 and 1932, producing a series of remarkable watercolours. On his return to Munich he found that Expressionism had been branded Entartete Kunst ('degenerate art') by the Nazis, who tprevented him from continuing in his art. It was for this reason that he returned to Athens in 1935. Having sold his studio in Germany, and unable to secure a teaching post at the Athens School of Fine Arts, Bouzianis was faced with poverty. He continued to produce brooding and psychologically penetrating portraits, while living in isolation and teaching private students. His sole one-man show in Greece took place at the Parnassos Gallery in Athens (1949) and inaugurated his reception in Greek artistic life. In the same year, Bouzianis became a foundering member of the group Stathmi, with whom he participated in many Greek and international exhibitions.