Portraits and Landscapes

By Artists Yannis Patsavos and Monahos Nikodimos

A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expression is predominant.  The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person.

And as for landscape, there are two main meanings for this word: it can refer to the visible features of an area of land, or to an example of the genre of painting that depicts such an area of land.   Landscape, in both senses, includes the physical elements of landforms such as (ice-capped) mountains, hills, water bodies such as rivers, lakes, ponds and the sea, living elements of land cover including indigenous vegetation, human elements including different forms of land use, buildings and structures, and transitory elements such as lighting and weather conditions.

Source: Wikipedia

YANNIS PATSAVOS

A visit to his studio reveals a genuine passion and devotion to an art form that captivated him throughout his life.  Diligently arranged book shelves which include, encyclopedias, art books, art journals, novels, history books, personal notebooks, writings, bookkeeping, artwork descriptions and documentation, magazines, newspaper articles painstakingly clipped and organized, seashells, random pieces of wood, stones from trips to different islands and landscapes in Greece; as a way to preserve glimpses of the places that would latter find their way into his paintings.  Anything you can imagine an artist owned and needed in pre-Worldwide Web times lives inside his studio.  What a true pleasure it was, to freely roam around his space and embrace his world, if only for a couple of hours during the selection process of the pieces that will be part of the show.

In his landscapes, Yannis Patsavos meticulously grants the viewer with scenes of the land that he loved to travel and lived in.  For this show, we have selected a series of watercolors that are composed inside a specific shape and beautifully executed.  Allow the work to speak for itself. The chosen series represents a small fraction of all the work currently housed in his studio.

Yannis Patsavos was born in Athens, in 1933, to parents of Arcadian descent.  He studied Administration and Political Sciences, obtaining a degree from the Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences.  He began painting from an early age and, being self-taught, he freely studied and followed the advice and example of the painter Spiros Vasileiou and the engraver A. Tassos (Anastasios Alevizos).  He travelled widely abroad (Naples, Rome, Florence, Venice, Milan, Munich, Vienna, Paris, Madrid, and Toledo) where he studied the art and technique of the great masters.

The main themes that run throughout his work are landscapes and still mainly through the use of oils, watercolors and ink.   His work was exhibited in 14 solo and 29 group shows, with works being included in public and private collections in Greece and abroad.

This particular series of works, with the landscape themes framed in circles, of 36 centimetres in diameter, was created during 1995-1996 and is being exhibited for the first time.  Some of the works are part of his greater series, entitled "Arcadian Physiographies: In the Steps of Pausanias," in which he charts the trails of the great Greek traveller and geographer of the 2nd century AD.  Being a life’s work for the artist, this series includes a great number of artworks in different shapes, dimensions and techniques, and remains unfinished...

MONAHOS NIKODIMOS

A visit to Nikodimos' studio by contrast to Patsavos’ strikes you, not so much for the well arranged printed matter, but for its resemblance to an 18th century salon that includes the work of a vigorous artist willing to test and extend his materials using a color palette that exposes no reservations to its use of subject matter, or paint application.  He lives surrounded by hundreds of paintings he has created throughout his life.  Inside his living room is a piano, which he plays masterfully and he also happens to be a writer.  When you encounter Nikodimos’ work you almost want to touch it to verify if the depth of each brush stroke has already dried or is in the process of doing so.

Unlike his work, his studio shares a striking resemblance to that of Francis Bacon’s.  His work holds glimpses of Van Gogh, Fauvism, Impressionism, Naive art and while they all merge to provide some understanding to the visual reading of his work, at the end, the final creation and result is truly his own.

We have selected a series of portraits that belong to different moments of his creative life.  Some of the pieces were painted in Athens, while others in Mount Athos, where he lived for more than 20 years.

When I paint I go back in time...

At the age of ten, I got my first paint colors, they were very cheap watercolors made for children to play around with.   But children are not interested on the monetary value of things, they enjoy bringing forth something very big out of something small and apparently unimportant.

As a young timid child, I dreamt of creating sunrays out of these colors, and to put these rays on a piece of paper, sunbeams that would be my own real possession. I am now 64 and I still follow the same dream.

I learnt how to paint because I wanted to catch this ray of light and at the age of 20, I followed the sun to Mount Athos.  I stayed there for over 20 years, and during that period of my life, I enjoyed painting the landscapes of Athos.

These landscapes are precious for me, because they sway as though they are swallowing the light and at the same time they appear to bulge because they seem to have eaten all the passing sunrays.

I feel like the same child hunting similar visions and fantasies.  And I continue to chase the same sunrays of my youth.

Monahos Nikodimos
June 6, 2015
Athens

Photos are from the opening night...