Alecos Kontopoulos

Kontopoulos' contributions to the development of abstraction within the Greek visual canon are of vast importance, and his pioneering interest in non-objective representation was groundbreaking in the midst of the monopoly of the 'Thirties Generation's' preoccupation with 'Greekness.' Kontopoulos' outlook was international, encouraged by his studies in France between 1930-1932 and 1935-1939. Although he would eschew the earliest manifestations of abstraction for realistic depiction or social symbolism, by the 1950s Kontopoulos was internationally acclaimed as a bastion of post-war abstraction. Kontopoulos' previous long-term commitment to figurative painting, as well as his schooling under the icon painter G. Sarafinos and at the School of Fine Arts under Georgios Jakobides, Dimitrios Geraniotis, Pavlos Mathiopoulos and Nikolaos Lytras made his leap into abstraction even more impressive. In 1939 the artist was appointed to the position of 'museum artist' at the National Archaeological Museum, where he worked until 1969, and his recognition of classical standards of composition would be discernible in paintings such as Présence d'un souvenir.

In the present work, successive layers of colour, varied textures and a concise brushstroke are testament to Kontopoulos' practiced knowledge of the analysis of form, as well as the masterful development of chromatic relations.