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Lot 79AR
Yiannis Spyropoulos(Greek, 1912-1990)PHORA A 130 x 162 cm.
26 November 2013, 14:00 GMT
London, New Bond StreetSold for £53,750 inc. premium
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Yiannis Spyropoulos (Greek, 1912-1990)
PHORA A
signed in Greek (lower right); signed, titled and dated 'JANNIS SPYROPOULOS PHORA A 1964' (on the reverse)
oil and mixed media on canvas
130 x 162 cm.
signed in Greek (lower right); signed, titled and dated 'JANNIS SPYROPOULOS PHORA A 1964' (on the reverse)
oil and mixed media on canvas
130 x 162 cm.
Footnotes
PROVENANCE:
Private collection, Athens.
EXHIBITED:
New York, Galerie des Deux Mondes, Flight Centre of TWA, April 1964.
Thoroughly suffused by darker tones, this evocative abstract canvas recalls the great masters of the 17th century, while the flashes of brilliant colour on the right are vaguely reminiscent of Rembrandt's golden light. As noted by Athens National Gallery Director M. Lambraki-Plaka, Spyropoulos's nocturnal symphonies represent the victory of light over darkness. "It is not by chance that even the colour in these compositions is identified with the light or more precisely with fire. The red is the fire, the yellow the flame and the rare and precious white is the detonation of the conflagration, the pure light, the purification."1 Reviewing the artist's work from the mid 1960s, art critic A. Weller noted: "It is the combination of technical discipline with emotional and intuitive expression which marks Spyropoulos's work as something of a rarity. No matter how bold or decisive the large design may be, the actual handling of the medium is elegant and restrained. The angular forms he creates are the shapes of nature itself, not the sharp-edged forms of man-made industrial things. The world that Spyropoulos portrays is essentially humanistic."2
1. M. Lambraki-Plaka, The Nocturnal Symphonies of Jannis Spyropoulos in Jannis Spyropoulos, The Classicist of Abstraction, exhibition catalogue, National Gallery - Alexandros Soutzos Museum, Athens 1995, p. 132.
2. A. Weller, preface to the Spyropoulos exhibition catalogue, World House Galleries, New York, 1963, adapted by B. Rothberg, The Charioteer review, no. 10, 1968, pp. 67-68.