Nicos Hadjikiriakos-Ghika

Receding Landscape was most likely painted at Hydra, an island in the Saronikos Gulf, whose architecture, topography, flora and fauna Ghika would incorporate into his oeuvre, especially in works of the late 1950s.  

In the present work, a landscape becomes a fragmented set within the confines of the canvas; layer upon layer of both pigment and visually descriptive devices build up the scene, and the elements of a landscape are united in a disjointed yet evocative and decorative fashion. Each recognisable constituent is superimposed upon yet another constituent or a motif taken from Ghika's Hellenic and Byzantine aesthetic vocabulary. 

Not only one of the fathers of Greek modernist painting, Nicos Hadjikiriacos-Ghika would extend his decorative, planar and Byzantine and Cubist-inspired aesthetic to the world of writing, book illustration, costume design and importantly, stage design. Joint ventures with the Marika Kotopouli Theatre (1937), the New School of Dramatic Art (1938), the National Theatre (1950), the Modern Greek Ballet of Rallou Manou (1950), the Matei School (1952) and Covent Garden in London (1961), were experiences which both complimented and reinforced his acute sense of spatial design and the decorative surface.