Nikos Engonopoulos

Private Collection, Athens

Athens, Zappion, 9th National Exhibition, 1973, no. 171
Warsaw, Zacheta Gallery, 1977
Athens, National Gallery, Nikos Engonopoulos, 1983, no. 86

Greek Painters of the 20th Century, Athens,1988, vol. B, no. 30, illustrated
Katerina Perpinioti-Agazir, Nikos Engonopoulos, Mythology, Athens, 2006, pp. 28 & 43, illustrated
Katerina Perpinioti-Agazir, Nikos Engonopoulos, son univers pictural, Athens, 2007, no. 1011, illustrated

Original canvas. There are no signs of retouching under ultraviolet light, and the work is clean and ready to hang, in very good original condition.
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In the present work, Engonopoulos pays homage to the richness of Greek myth, as Orpheus stands muscular and poised, holding the lyre by which he plays divine music. Bound by a railing, with the Mediterranean beyond, the stage on which Orpheus seems to stand reflects Engonopoulos' interest in set design. His figures are placed within an 'enigmatic system of poetic metaphor, based on classicistic compositional structure' (Haris Kambouridis and George Levounis, Modern Greek Art of the 20^th Century: The Complete Guide to the Collections of the Rhodes Municipality Modern Greek Art Museum, Athens, 1999, p. 116). In such works, the faceless figures represent the people of modern Greece within a traditional and uniquely Greek frame of reference.

A student of Parthenis at the School of Fine Art in Athens, Engonopoulos is considered the founder of surrealism in Greek art. In his imagery, the association of reality and myth, classical and modern, embodies the preoccupations of modern Greece through the subconscious. As Niki Loizidi notes, 'Engonopoulos gave [Greece] one version of surrealism, universal, but at the same time deeply rooted in Greekness' (Niki Loizidi, cited in Kambouridis and Levounis, ibid., p. 116).