Yiannis Spyropoulos

Painted in 1954.

Mykonos shows Spyropoulos on the cusp of his dramatic mixed media abstractions, having recently departed from his representational works of the 1940s and early 1950s. From this point the artist became renowned as Greece's poet of abstraction. It is in the works from this period that space and form began to constitute a unity, and it was by virtue of them that he introduced abstract art to Greece.

The vibrancy of the Greek landscape and its culture as seen through its population were important themes in the earlier works of Spyropoulos. Subjects such as the present are illustrated in rich yet subdued tones,  '... a long involvement in the colour of Greece itself - glinting rock in bright sunlight, the chiaroscuro of walls on ancient churches, the solid depth of rich earth' (Charles Spencer, The Studio, 1962, London, vol. 164). A certain formality of design is married to emotive, frenetic brushstrokes and a restrained, earthy palette throughout the artist's oeuvre, whether in his earlier, representational work or his later mixed media abstractions.