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Yiannis Moralis(Greek, 1916-2009)Femme nue assise
€50,000 - €70,000
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Find your local specialistYiannis Moralis (Greek, 1916-2009)
signé en grec (en bas à droite)
huile sur toile
76.5 x 40cm (30 1/8 x 15 3/4in).
signed in Greek (lower right)
oil on canvas
Footnotes
The female nude has always been a key subject in Moralis's art, expressing an enduring world beyond the mundane and the ephemeral, and achieving a modern realization of the classical ideal: the elimination of the temporary and the elevation of forms to symbols.
In Seated nude, the purity of form, the subtle use of colour and spatial relationships, the serene and disciplined rhythm dictated by a deep sense for human scale, the composed immobility, and the shallow compositional depth reminiscent of sculptural relief, echo the timeless values of Greek art. By sacrificing superfluous descriptive detail, rejecting the illusion of space, avoiding tonal gradations and emphasizing only the essential structural elements, Moralis leads the viewer from the sensual aspects of the subject to the universal and eternal, to the metaphysical and transcendental.
Reviewing the artist's work up to the late 1950s, when Moralis co-represented Greece in the 29th Venice Biennale, M. Chatzidakis noted: "Never has Moralis attempted to reproduce nature's play of light on bodies or objects. Instead, his figures are imbued with their own light, stable and unnatural, as found in Byzantine art, where the light source is indefinable. Anatomical distortion and the foreshortened perspective of figures are subordinate to the calm rhythm of the composition."1
1 M. Chatzidakis, "Yiannis Moralis", The Charioteer review, vol. 1, no. 1, Summer 1960, pp. 56-62.