Footnotes

Provenance
Acquired from the artist's daughter Mina Papaloucas and thence in the same collection.

Exposé
Thessaloniki, White Tower exhibition hall, Exhibition of Paintings by S. Papaloukas, December 25 1924 - January 1925, no. 23 under the title Karakallou chapel (possibly).

Littérature
Spyros Papaloukas, Painting 1892-1957, Ioniki Bank edition, Athens 1995, p. 108 (illustrated).
Spyros Papaloukas, Sojourn in Mount Athos, Mount Athos Gallery - Agra editions, 2003, no. 79 (illustrated).


This wonderful work is part of the artist's 1923-1924 Mount Athos output, an exquisite group of paintings that established him as a leading exponent of Greek plein-air painting. Bathed in diffused light and dominated by soft tonalities without intense gradations, the monastic chapel¹ is almost losing its structural integrity and material substance. Dematerialized, it no longer represents a specific place but reflects the infinite from whence ideal forms originate. As noted by the director of the National Gallery in Athens M. Lambraki-Plaka, Papaloukas's expertly trained eye reveals the 'eternal becoming' of the world.² "Up there, in Mt. Athos, I clearly saw that art in all its great manifestations through the ages has always been about form and colour."³.

¹ Founded in the 11th century and rebuilt in the 1500s by Moldavian voivode Peter IV Rares, the Karakallou Monastery on the south-eastern side of the Athos peninsula holds valuable manuscripts and rare books.
² See M. Lambraki-Plaka, "Papaloukas' Painting" in Spyros Papaloukas, Painting 1892-1957 [in Greek], Athens 1995, pp. 33-48.
³ As quoted by S. Doukas, Zygos magazine no.31, May-June 1958, p. 8.