Family Tree, 2019
Theodoros Zafeiropoulos (b. 1978) completed his doctoral dissertation at the University of Thessaly with praise. He participated in the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in the USA (2009), while he graduated and was honored with the Paula Rhodes Memorial Award from the MFA of the New York School of Visual Arts and scholarships from the Fulbright, Gerondelis and A. Onassis foundations, from Master of Fine Arts of the School of Fine Arts and the Department of Fine and Applied Arts of the respective faculty of the Aristotle University.
Since 2001 he has held 10 solo exhibitions and has participated in more than 100 international group exhibitions, residencies and projects in Greece and abroad. His works are in many public and private collections in Greece, Switzerland, London and the USA. Articles, reviews and presentations of his work have been published in dozens of Greek, international and online media. In 2017 I was elected assistant professor at the National Technical University of Athens at the School of Architectural Engineering.
Along with other participating artists, Zafeiropoulos visited Metsovo and observed the unique terrain and nature of the region; he conceived his work by serendipity. In the area above Katogi, in a dense forest of fir trees, an unexpected image made an indelible impression on him. Among the fir trees, he saw a disposed Christmas tree, and this sparked the idea to depict the Averoff family tree in the great outdoors, on the trees of the benefactor’s homeland. Thus, the artist created a palimpsest, using many layers of materials and techniques, combining the wild nature of the region with Evangelos Averoff’s family tree, based on a handwritten journal entry. He photographed the specific location, made a digital UV print on glass, also using collage, acrylic paints, and oils to capture the landscape. The acrylic and oil painting depicts fragmentary images of different Metsovo landscapes.
This elaborate work, titled Family Tree, masterfully combines painting, digital printing on glass and collage, in a thematic play on an association between the disposed Christmas tree and the family tree of the Metsovo benefactor, matching trees with names. Measuring 100 x 120 cm, the digital collage projects the chart of the Averoff family tree on the trees. The names are drawn on the trees like tattoos, green in the foreground, and black and white in the background.
The work was created especially for the group anniversary exhibition “Lands of Creation, A tribute to Metsovo”, which was inaugurated at the E. Averoff Museum in 2019.