Telling the story of a sculptor’s full life
Artists can be excellent narrators and talented users of speech. Yiannis Tsarouchis, for instance, was renowned for his simple but astute comments which are still quoted. Another artist, a contemporary of Tsarouchis, the late Christos Capralos also seems to have been comfortable with words, or so it seems from the autobiography recently released by Agra publications. Written in a direct manner which flows easily, the book helps one to understand the life of the artist and the artistic milieu of his time. It tells the story of one of Greece’s most important sculptors, the hardships that he faced in the 1940s and his gradual recognition as an artist. One learns how tobacco industrialist Yiannis Papastratos helped Capralos financially when he was still a young artist, that Capralos moved to Athens and then studied in Paris, of his exciting participation at the Venice Biennale in the early 1960s and of his years in Aegina where he spent most of his later life. Capralos also tells of his friendships with the poet Angelos Sikelianos and the painter Yiannis Bouzianis and, through his relationships with them, gives the reader insight into the intellectual atmosphere of the time. A pleasant read, Capralos’s autobiography is an unpretentious account of the artist’s life and, because it is written by the artist himself, helps clear up many of the myths that we usually associate with artists’ lives. No Man’s Land
