Yiannis Tsarouchis Greek, 1910-89

Painted in 1986-89.

Tsarouchis' initial training was at the School of Fine Arts in Athens under Georgios Jakobides (see lot 101) and Constantinos Parthenis (see lots 6 & 8) while also working in the studio of Fotis Kontoglou, a religious painter who exposed him to Byzantine art. In 1935 Tsarouchis left Athens for Paris. It was in the French capital that he was able to study the work of the Renaissance masters and French Impressionists. Immersing himself in Parisian art circles, he befriended painters such as Matisse, Laurens and Giacometti. By 1936 Tsarouchis had returned to his beloved Athens, organising his first solo exhibition.

Widely acclaimed as a painter of the Greek people, his work attempted a reconciliation of Western and Eastern pictorial traditions. Like many of the Greek avant-garde intellectuals and artists of his time, Tsarouchis became actively involved with the popular art movement and the search for Greekness in art. He travelled extensively in Greece, Turkey, Asia Minor and France, where he studied Byzantine music, painting and textiles, and was particularly inspired by the works of Matisse and Demetrios Galanis.

One of the most important representatives of the Thirties Generation, Tsarouchis embodied in his work the ideal of "Greekness". With a multiplicity of influences from Hellenistic and Byzantine art, the art of the Renaissance as well as the work of Matisse, Theophilos and Kontoglou, and the figures of Karaghiozis shadow puppets, he created a unique personal style and depicted landscapes, still lifes, nudes and allegorical scenes (see T. Giannoudaki, The National Gallery - 19th and 20th Century Greek Painting, Athens, 1992, p. 684).