This painting was designed at the same period with the Hunt and shares with it some same concepts and symbols... There is a huge reference to the works with mannequins of several mostly surrealist painters (and especially the ones of Nikos Engonopoulos).
This painting was designed for a friend of mine and it is based οn a painting Ι saw on the web, by Kazuya Akimoto, with the name "Woman in Pink". It is also based on some pics of female Mexican dancers.
(private collection)
This work is consisted of two paintings. The left one is based on the work St. Sebastian (1480) by Andrea Mantegna -while the other is based on the landscape of Gaza (in Palestine). In the first painting at the left the human figure of the saint is replaced with a mannequin. At the background there is an imaginary view of Athens.
In this work i tried to avoid the human-like mannequins (like the ones Dali or Engonopoulos used before) and use the standard model everyone can buy in art stores. Despite the fact that its pose is humanlike I think it's a choice that adds to the symbolism of the artist.
Behind it there is the city of Gaza and heavy clouds that resemble the smoke that coming from the dropped bombs. The painting was inspired by the Israeli attack on the ships of Free Gaza the spring of 2010.
(There is another very similar painting associated with Gaza. You can see it here)
This painting was inspired by my keen interest on medieval manuscripts and their illustrations. Apart from their visual beauty, i find fascinating the resemblance between comics and these illustrations as they both try to tell a story with visual means.
Here, I try to tell a story also. A story with a more or less clear political message and a medieval aesthetic…
I used acrylics as the painting has many small details that would demand great amount of time if I used oil colors. However I must admit that I'm not fully satisfied with the blue color of my skies (as trying to graduate from white to dark blue the paper got wrinkled by the amount of water)
Because of the gloss varnish I wasn’t able to photograph the painting so well. I have added a different version in the gallery –the actual painting’s colors are somewhere between these two versions.
Obviously the painting was inspired by the riots in Athens on December 2008 when a policeman murdered a young boy called Alexis Grigoropoulos. I must admit that this work is clearly in favor of the one side of this opposition but it was a situation that (in my opinion) couldn't afford 'objectivity' and detachment.
Another romantic story with Rhodes landscape at the left and Syros at the right. The theme with the girl and the balloon has appeared also in another painting of mine.
The paintings were given as a gift to a friendly couple.
In 2013 the painting with syros illustrated the front cover of a freepress magazine called Serious.
These three paintings were inspired by the famous Romeo and Juliet (by W. Shakespeare) but also by medieval fairytales of young princesses and princes /warriors and their forbidden love. I included a painting for the poet himself as he is creating the story. The place is undefined but filled with neoclassical buildings (perhaps an influence by Engonopoulos).
I gave each painting a dominant color to symbolize each character and used the golden /yellow hair of the girl to unify her with her lover. Hence the position of these two paintings is restricted. However if wished, one could place the third painting with the poet somewhere else.
the publications of colleagues, Nov. 2021
Summer of 1969, Italy. A year after May '68, FIAT workers began a dynamic and unmediated strike against their powerful boss. Their struggle marked the beginning of a decade of workers' and students' mobilizations and the rise of the Autonomy movement. It was characterized by many as the last invasion of the working class into the sky. Last ... let's hope until the next one ...