SOTIRIS ZERVOPOULOS, Painter
Please click on the image to view it in bigger size.
Please notice: this is only a part of the original composition.
Copyright art and photo © 1998 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
________________________________________________________________________________