Footnotes

PROVENANCE:
Gallery 3, Athens.
Private collection, Athens.

EXHIBITED:
Athens, Galerie "3", Nikos Engonopoulos retrospective, March 23 - April 15, 1981, no. 31.
Athens, Galerie "3", Nikos Engonopoulos Painting 1975-1985, November 4-30, 1985, no. 17.

LITERATURE:
Epiplo+Phos magazine, no. 2, 1981, p. 96 (illustrated).
K. Perpinioti-Agazir, Nikos Engonopoulos, His Pictorial Universe, Benaki Museum, Athens 2007, cat. no. 1109, p. 203 (illustrated), 384 (illustrated), 520 (illustrated).


Elegant and masculine with an athletic built, Engonopoulos's phantom-like mannequin figure introduces the viewer to a fascinating world of poetic metaphor. "I am not interested in the face" the great Greek surrealist often remarked. "Each may at his will, place mine or his own there. It's only the body that I paint. I love it because it is the chalice of life. As sparkling as life is when young."¹

As noted by Athens National Gallery Director M. Lambraki-Plaka, "Engonopoulos's figures may draw their origin from Giorgio de Chirico but they are unmistakably Greek, reminiscent of the Minoans immortalised on the Knossos frescoes and the early kouroi, while alluding to the tall and slender formula of the Byzantine saints also evident in El Greco's work."² Likewise, Professor D. Papastamos notes that "Engonopoulos's heroes are not 'disquieted'; on the contrary they fully experience an everyday reality still bound with tradition and eastern myths."³ As perceptively argued by art historian N. Loizidi, "Engonopoulos gave us one version of surrealism, universal but at the same time deeply rooted in Greekness."⁴

Here, a young Greek getting water from a well is the protagonist of a visual act that takes place outdoors in a shallow space reminiscent of a theatrical stage set.⁵ "The lack of vast open spaces and supernatural landscapes whose sheer size nullifies the human scale is a typically Greek element. Engonopoulos's work emulates Greece's natural environment, a setting that both frames and accentuates human activity."⁶ "The artist doesn't hesitate to explore the correlations between theatrical and pictorial space and introduce the theatrical into his painting."⁷ This sense of theatricality is accentuated by the use of vivid colour, a key element throughout Engonopoulos's career. Enamel-like blues, bright reds, fluorescent oranges and sparkling yellows invite the viewer to a festive ritual of vision. "Engonopoulos was a wizard with colour, which he handled with conscious daring, unique aptitude and undisputed love."⁸ For him each colour had its own value, its own voice, much the same as in Byzantine art, which Engonopoulos always considered the art form Greeks most closely relate to.⁹

The composition also features two cones, a sphere and a cylinder, whose unexpected inclusion subverts -in a typical surrealist fashion- the conventional ways with which rational thought perceives reality. These archetypal geometric forms echo the ideal world of Plato who considered them pure beauty and fundamental elements for building the universe. Elemental and three-dimensional, they also seem like stemming from a Bauhaus sculpture workshop in the 1920s, forming an imaginary cultural bridge that spans the millennia. As noted by Walter Gropius, the great German architect and founder of the Bauhaus School, these original geometric shapes are purely abstract entities that dash through time and space, ensuring validity in all human creations.

¹. Apogevmatini daily, 2.8.1969. See also An Interview with Nikos Engonopoulos, Manna, no 5, May 1974.
². M. Lambraki-Plaka The Timeless Pantheon of Nikos Engonopoulos [in Greek], Filologiki quarterly, no. 101, October-November-December 2007, p. 9.
³. D. Papastamos, preface to the Nikos Engonopoulos retrospective (exh. cat.) [in Greek], National Gallery-A. Soutzos Museum, Athens 1983, p. 8.
⁴. N. Loizidi, Surrealism in Modern Greek Art [in Greek], Athens 1984, p. 181.
⁵. See A. Kafetsi, Stage Setting Paradoxes of N. Engonopoulos [in Greek], Hartis journal, no.25/26, November 1988, p. 32.
⁶. S. Boulakian, The Work of Nikos Engonopoulos in Greek Painters-20th Century [in Greek], Melissa publ., Athens 1974, p. 261.
⁷. P. Rigopoulou, Nikos Engonopoulos in D. Tsouchlou-A.Bacharian, Stage-Setting in Modern Greek Theatre [in Greek], Athens 1985, p. 141.
⁸. Boulakian, p. 262.
⁹.Epitheorisi Technis journal, March 1963, pp. 193-197.