From 1968 Sifnos became one of Tetsis’ favourite destinations. The Cycladic landscape and rich Mediterranean light awakened deep memories for the painter from Hydra and his rich colour pallet turned into a monochrome. The green and deep brown of the earth are here depicted in black, emphasising the intensity of the midday light. These intensely charged blacks exude spirituality but also a harsh, one could say, poetry.
Panayiotis Tetsis was born in 1925 on the island of Hydra, where he spent his childhood before moving with his family to Piraeus in 1937. He spent the summers painting on Hydra and, aged only 14, acquired his first admirers, namely Dimitris Pikionis, Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika and the German painter Klaus Frieslander, who played an important role in his evolution as an artist. He studied at the ASFA with Konstantinos Parthenis and continued his studies on a scholarship in Paris.
He had already conquered the simplicity of drawing, organised composition and geometry from a young age, but never ceased to exercise his gaze in order to depict what he saw in his art. He was not interested in what cannot be seen. He sought his personal path through a painting tradition which began with the 16th century Venetians, through El Greco, Rubens and Delacroix to Mattise, Bonnard and Rothko. He was not ignorant of the movements current in Europe and America at the time, but insisted on serving the painting of the gaze. He returned to Greece in 1956 and was confronted, once again, by the Greek light, which, as he ascertained, “democratically flattened” the tones he so admired in the French Impressionist and post-Impressionist painters. Nevertheless, he persevered and, given his stubbornness, managed to translate the permeating Greek light into a unique pallet, so dynamic it vindicates the painter.
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