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Yannis Stavrou |
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| Yannis Stavrou Paintings | |
| Yannis Stavrou was born in Thessaloniki, Greece, in 1948. He originally studied sculpture at the Athens School of Fine Arts before painting won him over. He currently lives and works in Athens. He has done twenty six solo shows and participates in group exhibitions regularly. His works have been acquired by public and private collections all over the world. Stavrou introduces a modern figurative style in his impressionist landscape; rich colours penetrate the canvas creating an environment where abstract & figurative forms coexist. After a quite long period of involvement in a form of "modern academism" he is now going through a new stage, in which the form becomes more abstract, but the method of painting and the technique of paint and brush follow strictly the old classic methods. To the brush intervenes the knife in numerous layers of colour; in contradiction to the mat effect in his older work, his recent paintings are glistening - this enhances strongly the richness and the real texture of the oil colour (oil painting). | |
| Education: | |
| Yannis Stavrou studied Sculpture at the Athens School of Fine Arts- Polytechnic University of Athens. | |
| Awards: | |
| The art critic- professor of Art History in the University of Athens- Manos Stefanidis wrote about Yannis Stavrou’s work in 2006 (from his essay under the title "Glass Eyes, Resurrected Gazes - On Yannis Stavrou's Paintings"): "In modern times, painting is above all an act of resistance of the gaze...This is how I approach the painting of Yannis Stavrou. He is the nostalgic advocate of a different Thessaloniki, the orderly tracker of those small treasures that lie hidden in the pockets of daily routine. I see his paintings as a challenge for an inner voyage, an opportunity for a resurrection of the gaze - a prolongation of real life. His compositions are structured around two opposite poles: tenderness and a sturdy rhythm; a sense for detail and understanding of the whole; a kind of sentimental escape to mirthful images, as Kosmas Politis would put it, and a preoccupation with form, represented in an unadorned and solid fashion. His paintings keep alive the memory of those places he fell in love with in the past or create novel seas for new journeys. Here plasticity is achieved via abstractive processes, and elsewhere a tiny light - one catalytic brushstroke - unveils a well-hidden secret. His heavy blues are electrified with orange iridescences and his reds never leave his blacks or dark greens unaccompanied. This is how it goes: what is sweet should always come out of what is bitter, and vice versa. Stavrou’s art is guided by his perseverance in striving for a self-sufficient visual language and by his grasp, empirical and therefore true, of modern Greek painting - from Papaloukas to Tsarouchis and from Spyropoulos to Tetsis - until he finds his own style, Clive Bell’s ‘significant form’ or Cassirer and Panofsky’s ‘symbolic form.’ In other words a character of its own which will mark his work regardless of the period it was created. Let me not baffle you with any further technicalities. The robustness of Yannis Stavrou’s painting lies in that it can be enjoyed without the aid of theoretical crutches and critical witticisms.” | |
| Single Exhibitions: | |
| 1978, "MEDUSA", Athens 1979, "WORKSHOP", Larissa 1980, "MEDUSA", Athens 1985, "EPOCHES", Kifissia - Athens 1987, "EPOCHES", Kifissia - Athens 1995, "IMAGE"- Sculpture, Athens 1996, Hydra's Town Hall 1996, "MONOHORO", Athens 1996, Bank of Greece, Athens 1997, "AL ANDAR" - Latin America's Institute of Culture, Athens 1997, Hydra’s Town Hall 1998, "IANOS"- Exhibition of Paintings made for Harry Klynn's poetic collection "City", Thessaloniki 1998, Hydra’s Town Hall 1998, "IANOS", Thessaloniki 1999, "IMAGE", Athens 1999, Hydra’s Town Hall 2000, "KIVOTOS", Hydra 2000, "IANOS", Thessaloniki 2001, "STOA TOU VIVLIOU", Athens 2001, "KIVOTOS", Hydra 2002, "IANOS", Thessaloniki 2002, "Piraeus Marine Club", Piraeus 2002, "KIVOTOS", Hydra 2003, "KIVOTOS", Hydra 2004, "KIVOTOS", Hydra 2004, "METAMORFOSIS", Thessaloniki | |
| Artist's Statement: | |
| "There’s a central theme underlining my work: Greece in colours. Cities, streets, people, sea depictions fading rapidly, everything I love and miss. Emotional tension finds an outlet in the process of creation. People and historical events live inside me as shapes and colours. Colour is central to my painting. Life is the epitome of the universe. Through painting I try to stay close to those things I like but can’t own. The human vanity in the process of selection. This mysterious repetition of nothingness that torments us all. Things which often hurt us but we insist on desiring and loving in a unique way" | |
| Buy Yannis Stavrou paintings at New Art Collectors, the fine art gallery. Find abstract and landscape paintings, prints, photography & sculpture for sale international artists and designers. |
