Collection's title

Metsovo, St. Nicholas' Monastery

Metsovo, St. Nicholas' Monastery
Metsovo, St. Nicholas' Monastery
Artist
Malamos Costas
(1913-2007)
Artist's CV
All artist's collections
CV
Malamos Costas
(1913-2007)

An artist of modern everyday reality, Costas Malamos depicts in his works the life, history, passions, and environment of the Greek people. Without ever departing from representational painting and with colour as his main means of expression, he creates an art in which, often, the realistic style is not a mere record of the outer world, but ends in an effort to interpret it, as he gives an inner content to his work. Around 1965, in a unique combination of plein air painting and a realist style, he created his series of Athens neo-Classical buildings. The free painting, which is not restricted by the geometrical arrangement imposed by architecture, makes use of all the possibilities of light, while faithfulness in the rendering stresses the individual characteristics of each building, thus producing 'portrait' images. With the deathly silence which envelops them, they exude a metaphysical mood.

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Υλικό
Oil on maronite
Dimensions
24X35
Source
-
Description
Metsovo, Monastery of St Nicholas and Yannena are images from his beloved Epirus, Malamos's place of origin, which he never abandoned except for his residence in Athens after finishing his studies at the School of Fine Arts. Both works belong to the post-1970 decades, a period at which his individual style, particularly in the rendering of buildings, had already taken shape. Bathed in light, the Monastery of St Nicholas is shown as radiant, with gradations of green in the surrounding space and of beige-brown on the building. With the subject incised on a plane very close to the viewer, and the purity of his realistic style – in spite of the fact that the bright light eliminates the details – the monastery imposes itself upon the space in spite of the lowliness of its construction.