Moralis and his distinctive art
An exhibit organized a few years ago by the DESTE Foundation, with the playful title «Everything That is Interesting is New,» played with the question of innovation as a component of artistic value, reminding the viewer just how dependent on originality and newness our notion of good art is. Oddly enough, some art, or better yet, some artists, are exempt from such strict criteria. These are the artists-icons, already established, whose work, even when stylistically repetitive, we have come to accept as distinct and beyond criticism. Yiannis Moralis’s indisputable contribution to the development of modern art in this country has turned him into just this kind of emblematic figure. His works are recognizable for their flat areas of color arranged in abstract shapes, a post-cubic play of color and form that is often suggestive of the female figure. Approaching his 90s, Moralis is a lively character in the capital’s social milieu, a symbol of old-time Athens and its intellectual life. He works prolifically but only shows his paintings every five years – always at the Zoumboulakis Gallery – and when he does, it is always an event that rallies the Athens establishment, including art collectors – purportedly one of them paid 35 million drachmas (103,000 euros) for one of his latest works – but also young artists, some of them former students of Moralis’s years of teaching at the Athens School of Fine Arts. With such an aura surrounding both his persona and his work, reviewing his latest work is bound to be somewhat biased. The 16 large paintings on display are variations of the abstract compositions so distinctive of Moralis’s style. It is a style known for capturing the essence of «Greekness,» an association that finds its explanation in the fact that Moralis was a member of the so-called Thirties Generation, intellectuals whose search for the establishment of a Greek identity was what made them distinct. In the field of art, Tsarouchis, Nikolaou, Nikos Hadzikyriakos-Gikas and Moralis were among the painters who expressed this tendency by combining modernist precepts in painting (all of them had spent some time studying abroad, mostly in Paris) with an attention to themes derived from Greek tradition. To this day, the Moralis’ paintings resonate with this odd mixture. The style is definitely modern, but knowing of Moralis’s association with «Greekness,» one cannot help but trace the influence of archaic sculpture in his contained compositions, their measured proportions and sense of balance. Knowing of Moralis’s renowned appreciation for women both in art and life, one can also understand why women, painted in abstraction, are depicted in most of the paintings. Sensual but contained forms are drawn against a background that suggests the horizon meeting the line of the sea. These could be women looking out to the sea caught up in a sensual summer breeze. Like in most powerful works, the associations could go on forever but the prevailing feeling is unmistakably that of the Greek landscape made all the more apparent by the recurrent use of whites and blues. The «Greek spirit» as captured in the Greek landscape has nowadays become a tired theme, sentimentalized and exhausted to the point of becoming a cliche no more significant than vapid nostalgia for the simple, Greek traditional life. But Moralis was sensing the starkness and simplicity of Greek life well before such themes were trivialized, which is probably why his paintings have the kind of genuine quality still capable of eliciting a forceful, if not only familiar, impression. This is what, after all, makes his exhibit at the Zoumboulakis Gallery not just an exhibit about art, but also an exhibit which reflects an entire generation and one of its most distinct members. This is also why the gallery owner has complemented the exhibit with an entire section of pictures that French photographer Jean-Francois Bonhomme took of Moralis in both his Athens and Aegina workshops. In an exhibit where the works are seen as so representative of the artist who produced them, the inclusion of photos showing the artist and his surroundings is an appropriate choice. They are just another reminder that the legends that often surround the artists are sometimes so decisive in conditioning our own reception of their art.
