Diamantis Diamantopoulos

Galerie Timos, Athens
Private Collector, Athens

In the present work, a man stoops forward to collect sponges lying at his feet on a beach, while a group stands behind him in various poses looking on. Diamantopoulos' strong and vivid colours, particularly in the vibrant red of the man's shirt, complemented by the orange worn by the onlooker, lend vibrancy to the linear composition.

Diamantopoulos, like Tsarouchis, focused almost exclusively on the human form; however, contrary to Tsarouchis, his interest was centred on man involved in toil. Impoverished for most of his life, Diamantopoulos worked in a variety of different occupations in order to survive, but never stopped painting; his choice of unskilled labourers as subjects of his works was thus imbued with familiarity and very personal. The expressive force of works such as The Sponge Gatherers  was achieved by a combination of stylisation and primitivism, modelled yet simplified features, which are typical of Diamantopoulos' works.

Diamantopoulos was an integral member of the Thirties Generation, a term coined for those artists who lived and worked in Greece between the two World Wars. This group of artists was preoccupied both with the assimilation of diverse artistic currents, and the formulation of an independent Greek cultural identity. Here the work depicted is typical of the Greek islands, whose shores provide the perfect environment for sponge growth.

In the 1980 Ora exhibition catalogue the work appears to be unsigned but was most likely signed by the artist at a later date.