Diamantis Diamandopoulos

Diamandopoulos started painting during his school years and had his first exhibition of works in tempera in 1931 in Athens at the Shelter of Art. In his early works from the 1930s he was experimenting with a post-Cubist style that was then totally unknown in Greece and was also inspired by Surrealism. The unfamiliarity of his style was initially received with hostility from the establishment. Between 1931 and 1936 Diamantopoulos studied at the Higher School of Fine Arts in Athens under  Parthenis. While there he discovered Greek folk art and also became involved with the movement for the re-evaluation of Greekness that prevailed in Greek intellectual circles at the time. After fighting in the Albanian campaign early in World War II he spent the rest of the war years in Athens, taking part in the group exhibitions of contemporary Greek artists at the National Archaeological Museum (1942-3), and after the war exhibited at the British Council and the Royal Academy in London.

From 1950 onwards Diamandopoulos disappeared from the Greek artistic scene. His wartime activity with the Resistance made him persona non grata in a period of right-wing political oppression in Greece, and he made a living working as a teacher, painting in isolation in his spare time. It was not until the 1970s that Diamandopoulos reemerged as an artist. His retrospective at the National Gallery and Alexandros Soutzos Museum, Athens, 1978, in which the present work was included, was highly acclaimed by the critics, and established him as a leading painter of his generation.

Diamantopoulos's early subjects were still-lifes; later he became exclusively interested in the human figure, especially workers and masons, developing a style that fused elements and themes from Greek everyday life with a geometric monumentality. The present work, showing workers plastering, is testimony to Diamandopoulos' mature style with its focus on the human form.