P. Tetsis

Thalassa

25.06 - 24.09.2006

In the summer of 2006, the spaces of the Museum of Contemporary Art of the Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation in Andros were overflowed with colour and light, as the work of Panayiotis Tetsis (1925-2916), renowned exponent of the Modern Greek tradition in contemporary painting, was presented there, offering the public this great pleasure.

This elegy of colour was an attempt in revisiting the space and time of Tetsis' painting, through a theme that we all hold dear, namely the sea. The sea as experience and memory is an emotionally charged space, around which developed a considerable part of the artist's visual problematics and on which focused an equally significant part of his quest in art, already from the very beginning of his career, ultimately placing him among the genuine representatives of the Greek seascape tradition.

Tetsis's painting treats this primeval theme in the spirit of the times, both avoiding stereotypes and radical breaks with tradition, taking it into its contemporary iconographic expression on the basis of rules and perceptions that took shape in the first decades of the 20th century. His seascapes are an ode to the Aegean, sea of light and of myths, sea of alternating colour variations and shades.

A painter of colour and of the senses, Tetsis imprints his seascapes with his own particular mark, as he does all of his works irrespective of the thematic cycle to which they may belong. The compositional clarity of his work, its monumental quality, its openness in terms of contours, its expansive brushstrokes and fullness of colour are elements that offer the viewer a deep sense of mental euphoria and sensuous pleasure.

The exhibition / tribute to the work of P. Tetsis, included mainly large-scale works, oil-pastels and gouaches of almost monumental proportions, which belonged to private or public collections, but also works that P. Tetsis had created on the occasion of this tribute.

The exhibition was accompanied by an elegant edition, which features texts by Mr. Kyriakos Koutsomallis, Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art of the Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation, Mr. Guiliano Serafini, Art Historian and Critic, as well as by Mr. Harris Kambourides, Art Critic and Semiologist. The catalogue further features a biography of the artist's illustrated with photographic material, as well as a detailed bibliography.