Lot 33
  • 33

Georgios Bouzianis Greek, 1885-1959

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Description

  • Georgios Bouzianis
  • young man reading
  • signed u.r.
  • oil on canvas
  • 101.5 by 71cm., 40 by 28in.

Provenance

Heinrich Barchfeld, Leipzig, purchased from the artist
Herbert Marwitz Collection, Munich
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Exhibited

Munich, Bayerische Versicherungskammer, Jorgo Busianis: Ölbilder - Aquarelle - Zeichnungen, 1985, no. 3

Literature

Dimitris Deligiannis, Bouzianis, Athens, 1996, pp. 27, 115 & 286, p. 28, illustrated & no. 98, illustrated

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Catalogue Note

Painted circa 1928.

Widely regarded as Greece's leading expressionist painter, Bouzianis was deeply influenced by the avant-garde currents he encountered while in Munich from 1907 until 1934.

After studying at the Munich Academy under Otto Seitz and with the German Impressionist Max Liebermann, Bouzianis became associated with the two dominant groups of German Expressionist painters: Die Brücke, which counted among its members Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Max Pechstein and Emil Nolde; and Der Blaue Reiter, led by Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc. These painters explored the passage to a more spiritual existence and the expression of human feeling in the light of what they perceived as an encroaching destructive industrial civilization.

Commissioned by Bouzianis' patron and agent Heinrich Barchfeld in 1928, the present work was painted at the height of the artist's Munich period, cut short by the rise of the Nazis in the early 1930s.  Young Man Reading epitomises Bouzianis' pre-occupation with colour over form, and the expression of feeling over subject.