i’m starting the process of searching through the drawings and paintings in my collection from my 1964-1979 greek period, in preparation for a proposed retrospective in museums in athens and andros. today i came across these 3 drawings from 1975. the first, on the lower left, is a drawing of greek writer vasilis vasilikos, best known as the author of the 1967 novel, Z. in the center below is a drawing of my favorite model, kyriakos. he was a street sweeper in the plaka neighborhood where my athens studio was located, and i made many drawings and paintings of him standing with his broom and looking out the window. and on the right, one of the many construction workers i drew and painted, apostolis.
it will make me extremely happy if i can manage, with help from my friends in greece, to put this retrospective together. greeks who know me from that period will be able to experience and remember the arc of my career in greece; the people and places i painted. and it will introduce younger greeks to a rich part of their cutlural history.
the works are in private, corporate and museum collection in greece, and with a little effort, can be located. i have a number of them in my personal collection here in colorado, which can be shipped to greece. i’m researching museums both in athens, where i lived with my wife & son, and andros, where we spent our summers in a large, beautiful home on the sea which belonged to my ex-wife’s grandmother.
a look back:
as a student, my idols were vermeer and his contemporaries, as well as bonnard and vuillard. at that time I was surrounded by the abstract expressionist world In nyc, and I began to seek an artistic scene that was more of a fit to my natural interests.
soon after my arrival in greece in 1963, i knew I had found my answer. i became fully immersed in the world of contemporary greek realist painting. within a year, I was fluent in modern greek. my main mentors in painting were my former mother in law, niki karagatsi and her dear friend since art school, yannis tsarouchis. i spent many hours in tsarouchis' studio in maroussi, just outside athens. he often referred to me the spy, since I was always asking questions or just hanging out and observing his process. amongst other things, he introduced me to fayum portraits and spoke at length about his desire to bring the art of the east and west together in his art.
