Collection's title

Head of a Statue with Mask, 1994

Head of a Statue with Mask, 1994
Head of a Statue with Mask, 1994
Artist
Karavousis, Sarantis
(Athens 1938 - Athens 2011)
Artist's CV
All artist's collections
CV
Karavousis, Sarantis
(Athens 1938 - Athens 2011)

Sarantis Karavousis has a profound knowledge both of the ancient, Byzantine, and vernacular tradition - which he got to know by means of travelling all over Greece on a scholarship from the Sate Scholarship Foundation after his graduation from the School of Fine Arts in 1953 - and of European art - old and modern - which he studied with a French government scholarship from 1967 in Paris, where, in the end, he lived for more than 30 years. The artist has created an oeuvre which has a vibrant life through the point of reference of antiquity, but also through the mythology and symbolism suggested by everyday functional objects, rendered with the magic and poetry of metaphysical painting. Reality and memory, impression and remembrance, mythology and iconography make up a bizarre world, full of serenity and nostalgia, a magical, dreamlike world. Statues with severed limbs, pieces of sculptures, pitchers, antefixes, masks, broken columns, pieces of ancient inscriptions are combined with simple everyday objects, bottles, clothes, textiles, clocks, in order to convey the magic and poetry of a metaphysical painting which expresses itself in dream landscapes, still lifes, or interiors of rooms.

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Υλικό
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
60,5X81
Source
Gift of the artist
Description
In Head of a Statue with Mask, a linking of apparently unrelated things - a mask, a head of a statue, bottles, geometrical patterns which make reference to doors and windows - calls upon the viewer to discover the idea which permeates the work by exploring the depths of consciousness. The transcendental light with which the objects are imbued, the sense of desolation which floods the composition, and the boundless calm which is conveyed to the beholder are features which spiritualise the space and point to the sphere of the unreal. The earthy colours and those in a shade of warm grey, in low tones, harmoniously rendered - among which the bright red of the box does not shatter, but, on the contrary, binds together the composition - suggest a place in which an indefinite mystery is abroad, a place of a strange process which presses for the solution of the puzzle which is allegorically depicted, an enigma as to the essence-meaning of the life of man and of his destiny.