SOTIRIS ZERVOPOULOS

BIOGRAPHY

Sotiris Zervopoulos was born in Thessaloniki (Greece) in 1934. He graduated from the Academy of Graphic Arts of Munich in Germany. Later on became professor Christos Lefakis' assistant, in the school of Architecture, university of Thessaloniki, where he was the professor of Fine Arts. Now he lives in Thessaloniki, where he teaches painting, design, and graphic arts at a state high school and he works as a graphic designer to, for luxurious editions. He has published articles on arts in newspapers and he has been a judge for many posters competitions as well as photograph ones. He has exhibiting his paintings since 1961 in numerous collective and individual exhibitions in Greece, Europe and U.S.A. Many of his works belong to private and public collections in Greece as well as abroad. He is a member of many associations and a founder member of the artists association of northern Greece, where he has been recently the vice-president. __________________________________________________________________________ Personal anxieties and collective fears in the artistic creation of Sotiris Zervopoulos With frequent appearances, one-man exhibitions and group events Sotiris Zervopoulos has returned to offer us new samples of his explorations in the plastic arts. A pupil of Christos Lefakis in Thessaloniki, he continued his studies at The Academy of Graphic Arts of Munich, yet he has not confined himself to 'conquered territory'. Indeed, the determining factor in his explorations is that he is constantly renewing his language of expression. Zervopoulos' starting point is a permanent existential restlessness and a constant concern for the nature of the world and of our age. Rich composition and sureness of color are evidenced in all his works at every stage of his artistic career. In his most characteristic work the combination of composition and color and a form of dialogue, imposed by these, are a determining factor. The student of Zervopoulos' work can discern these elements both in those works noted for their expressionism and in those based on geometrical abstraction and the group of works characterized by the combination of circles and squares. In all of these works the artist himself is clearly visible, an artist concerned not so much to remain within one particular form of plastic art as to express group fears and personal anxieties. Zervopoulos has gone a stage further with his latest works; in these the Viewer can see imposed a more composite and clearly personal language of expression. In his most characteristic works of the last two of three years what makes the greatest impression is the purely personal combination of elements of Pop Art with those of geometrical abstraction, imposed just as much by the fact that real objects are interposed as by the role of the values of the plastic arts. The parallel use of collage and standard painting formulae gives to his works a special power of expression. In the most characteristic of these works one receives not so much the picture as the feeling of destructive powers outside the control of man. The impression is heightened both by the fact that the painting surface is divided into parts and by the purely personal combination of color and composition, real objects and painting formulae, surface and inner space. The variety of materials -wood, pieces of material, glass give to his works a rich expression, as they are intensified by elements from pure painting. The role of color deserves special note: blood red, which penetrates both objects and material; black and white, suggesting the feeling of destruction and even the impression of MEMENTO MORI. Pictorial elements interposed in some cases, fragmented and alienated, suns which no longer give light, are used to complete the whole more clearly. Thus, even when in several of his works active diagonals are interposed, or the well known feature of the circle within the square, they appear to be employed further to stress the same impression. One can say of Zervopoulos' most recent and characteristic work that this restless artist is not now aiming to present simply a res'ume' of all his past work but to express a world unable to find its way. The artist suggests a deep pessimism expressed by half destroyed objects and by the very nature of the combinations, in color and in space. For he offers us space in which man no longer has any place and where nature itself has lost its essence. The artist succeeds in offering, with no frills or cheap tricks, something from the impass of a world which has sentenced mankind. A language of expression which stands out for its expressive power and inner truth, making us aware of the problems of the nature of this age. An art which aims not to flatter or to impress but to express in a purely personal idiom the meeting of the artist with our fate. CHRYSANTHOS CHRISTOU Professor in the History of Art, University of Athens, Greece