A Village on Lesvos
Artist
Spyros Papaloukas
(1892 - 1957 )
Date1924
MediumOil on cardboard
Dimensions27 x 33 cm
Collection No1160
Description
"Α
Village on Lesvos" by Spyros Papaloukas belongs to a series of
landscapes painted by the artist during his six-month stay on the island of
Lesvos. On a hillside, houses and trees are depicted in frontal view, through
an extreme flattening, an element that Papaloukas borrows from Byzantine art.
This, however, he also combines with a different colour management that denotes
Western influences: unrealistic tones of alternating cold and warm colours
stylise and shape the volumes of the buildings and vegetation, with a minimal
use of drawing in the contours. Bridging the lessons of the Fauves as to the
intensity of colour with the principles of Cézanne as to the clarity of
structure, Papaloukas organises his composition by highlighting the main
features of the forms into harmoniously alternating surfaces that receive the
light as an additional element of landscape clarity.