Bonhams 1793 : Alecos Condopoulos (Greek, 1905-1975) Femmes à l'oiseau 162 x 107 cm.

PROVENANCE:
Spyros Spiteris collection, Michigan, c. 1956.
Sotheby's Greek Sale, 14 November 2007, lot 71.
Acquired by the above sale from the present owner.

EXHIBITED:
Sao Paolo, IV Biennale du Musée d'Art Moderne de Sao Paulo, September-December 1957 (listed in the exhbition catalogue, no.5, p.239).

LITERATURE:
Alekos Kontopoulos, exhibition catalogue, National Gallery - Alexandros Soutzos Museum, Athens 1976, p.10 (illustrated).

An important work by a leading figure of Greek modernism, exhibited at the prestigious Sao Paolo Biennale, Femmes à l'oiseau marks a decisive turning point in Condopoulos's efforts to free himself from the confines of mundane reality and aspire to the creation of a new visual cosmos.

Reviewing the artist's 1957 one man show at the Zygos gallery in Athens that included the picture, art critic T. Spiteris noted: "The exhibition confirmed the artist's vacillating course between his adherence to the past and a vision of non-objectivity that would offer him emotional emancipation. Works such as Femmes et oiseau (1956) include direct references to objective vision. Though schematised, the figures are still recognisable. The composition is the outcome of a logical process, of clear thought, with the linear combinations and colour juxtapositions underscoring the work's architectural structure. Hints to the artist's native reality are included not as evidence of pseudo-Greekness, but rather, as the artist himself once wrote, as an allusion to an expanded reality that is universal and boundless."¹

¹. T. Spiteris, "The Poet-Painter" [in Greek], The Greek Painters, vol. 2, The 20th Century, Melissa editions, Athens 1974, p. 460.