Footnotes

Provenance
Private collection, London.

Expositions
Rome, Il Gabbiano Art Gallery, Yannis Tsarouchis, May 29 -June 30, 1974, no.34 (illustrated in the exhibition catalogue).
Bologna, Forni Gallery, Yannis Tsarouchis, 1975.
Athens, Kalfayan Galleries, Yannis Tsarouchis (1910-1989), December 14, 2007 - January 26, 2008 (illustrated in the exhibition catalogue, p. 42).


When I feel like a westerner,
Vermeer is to me the greatest painter.
Y. Tsarouchis¹

Inspired by Jan Vermeer's Love letter, c. 1669-1670 (Ritzmuseum, Amsterdam), this captivating work features Dominique, Tsarouchis's most characteristic sitter. "The model I chose was a youngster from Chartres, Dominique, who showed skills in painting, poetry and music. At that time [1973], I was engrossed in that new type of youth with long hair and clothes usually bought in flea markets, embodying the traditional French with a touch of revolution."²

As noted by A. Szymczyk who co-cutated the artist's 2021 retrospective in Chicago, "the negotiation and transgression of limits between art and the everyday were central to Tsarouchis's work and philosophy. Many of his later works enter into erudite dialogue with the old masters revered and studied by Tsarouchis. Appropriating compositional schemes from Vermeer van Delft and other Dutch Golden Age painters (The letter, The painter and the model) or portraying himself copying Titian, Tsarouchis ignored artistic fashions of his day, keeping at a distance from his contemporaries and instead creating a world of thoughts, emotions, and imagery that was unmistakably his own. He dodged expectations and was a true postmodern artist avant la lettre, constantly brushing up against the grain of his time, fully aware of the fact that his work would only be appreciated in the future."<sup>3

1</sup> Yannis Tsarouchis Painting, Comments [in Greek], Yannis Tsarouchis Foundation, Athens 1990, p. viii.
² Y. Tsarouchis, "The Four Seasons" [in Greek] in Stone Rejected by the Builders, Kastaniotis editions, Athens 1989, p. 151.
³A. Szymczyk, "The Entrance for Yannis Tsarouchis" in N. Gripari and A. Szymczyk ed., Yannis Tsarouchis, Dancing in Real Life, exhibition catalogue, Wrightwood 659, Chicago 2021, pp. 302-303.