Nicos Hadjikiriakos-Ghika

Purchased from the artist by the parents of the present owner in the early 1970s

London, Whitechapel Gallery, Ghika Paintings 1934-1968, 1968, no. 92, illustrated in the catalogue
Athens, National Gallery and Alexandros Soutzos Museum, Ghika, 1973, no. 137, illustrated in the catalogue

Myrtali Acheimastou-Potamianou & Nicos Hadjikirakos-Ghika, 'Nicos Hadjikirakos-Ghika', in Greek Painters of the 20th Century, Athens, 1975, vol. I, pp. 341 & 344; fig. 25, illustrated
Kleanthi-Christina Valkana, Nicos Hadjikiriakos-Ghika, Paintings, Athens, 2011 [2012], p. 302, no. 381, illustrated

Original canvas. Some of the pigments fluoresce under ultraviolet light but these appear to be the artist's original and not retouching. Overall this work appears to be in good original condition. Held in a modern narrow silver-painted frame.
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Painted in 1967, the present work reflects the artist's interest in facets and planes and the manipulation of composition and space.

Beginning and ending his life in Greece, Nikos Hadjikiriakos-Ghika began his artistic scholarship under Konstantinos Parthenis in Athens, relocating to Paris to enrol at the Sorbonne, the Ranson Academy and the studio of Dimitris Galanis. This erudite, well-travelled and sophisticated background would nourish a hungry mind, open to the concept of an analytic and mathematical form of modernism. This visual vocabulary owed much to the methodical teaching of Parthenis, with its emphasis on geometric principles, the Byzantine art that Ghika cherished, and the work of artistic luminaries of the Parisian modernist enclave such as Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque.

The reality that Ghika painted was not one of fantasy or intuition, but of individuality of expression and visualisation. Calligraphic, Byzantine, and Cubist influences unite in a colourful and kaleidoscopic expression of admiration for the Greek landscape the artist would thematically revisit throughout his life.

Ghika was one of the most influential Greek artists of his generation, a leading figure in the artistic movements of the 1930s and one of the most important exponents of modern Greek art. During his lifetime he exhibited over fifty times in cities including Athens, Paris, London, New York, Venice, Berlin and Geneva, and his paintings can be found in the collections of the National Gallery and Alexandros Soutzos Museum, the Benaki Museum, the Musée d'Art Moderne, Paris, the Tate Gallery, London, and the Metropolitan Museum in New York.