Yannis Tsarouchis: A Painter's Journey
May 7 - July 31, 2022
Ploutarchou 28, Athens, Greece
I have always tried to let myself be free amongst the currents so I could understand my own strength. Paris and the Museums have led me from Surrealism to Realism.
Saturday 7th of May sees the opening of a new exhibition at the Tsarouchis Foundation.
The selection of works has the aim of showing to the visitor the manner with which Tsarouchis was approaching the development of his work.
It is interesting to understand that despite changes, his journey was a constant. As he went along the way he retained the elements that interested him and used them in his future quests.
There is an immediacy between his comments and his work as is shown in writing in 1935, after his first visit to Paris:
Let us let go of generalisations and let me say something specific about my work. Despite the myriads of differences that my work presents two are my basic quests. One quest is, so to speak, Neoclassical and tries to assimilate the ancient classical ideal, as it was expressed for the whole world in the Renaissance and the Baroque. My other tendency is to contradict my own said ideal helped (or aided) on one hand by all the great dissenters of our age and on the other hand by the old Greek prototypes that often are the witnesses and the supports of these contradictions.
On the top floor are exhibited maquettes of plays produced and performed as well as a series of maquettes for idealised performances that Tsarouchis had always wished to see come to life . These are theatrical journeys in which one can see the revolutionary ideas that Tsarouchis had for the theatre.
Fondation Yannis Tsarouchis, Ploutarchou 28, Marousi, Tel 210 8062 636 – 7
Opening Saturday 7 May, 2022 Time: 10 am – 10 pm
Duration of exhibition 7 May – 31 July, 2022
Horaires d'ouvertures, Monday – Friday: 9 am – 2 pm, Saturday and Sunday: 10 am – 3 pm
Tsarouchis
He is unanimously recognized in his native country as one of its most important painters of the twentieth century. Born in 1910 in the Greek port city of Piraeus and educated at the School of Fine Arts in Athens, he began painting at an early age and earned his living as a set and costume designer for the theater. In 1935 Tsarouchis went to Paris for the first time, where he encountered the work of Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst and other artists of the Avant-garde. In 1938, at the age of 28, he had his first solo exhibition in Athens. After serving in the Greek army on the Albanian front in Second World War, he returned to painting and working in the theater, gaining an international reputation. During Greece’s military dictatorship (1967—1974), Tsarouchis went into exile in Paris to then return to Athens, where he lived until his death in 1989.
He absorbed and transformed influences including such Greek vernacular traditions as crafts, costumes, and ornaments; Ancient Greek and Early Christian art; Byzantine mosaics, frescoes, and icon painting; Greek shadow theater Karaghiozis; and also the new languages of modern art: Cubism, Fauvism, and Surrealism.
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