Quay, 1935-38, oil on cardboard, 26 x 35.8 cm

In this work from Germenis’s early period, Quay, painted sometime between 1935 and 1938, the artist depicts a natural everyday scene from the seaport of a city. The composition is split in two by a diagonal line. On the right, we see three men standing on the quay, chatting. One of them, probably a docker, has his back turned to us. The other two, most likely bourgeois employers, are dressed similarly in dark suits and wearing wide-brim hats, while their facial traits are indiscernible. In the background, we observe the moored boats and further back we see some masts and the urban landscape. It is a familiar image, a fleeting moment that the artist manages to capture on the canvas.

Quite interesting is the almost photographic depiction of this moment from three people’s everyday life. The colour is what defines the shapes, while balance is achieved by the contrast of warm yellows and browns with cold blues and greens. At the same time, the Greek light is shown as it really is, intense, merciless and sometimes blinding. This scene of urban everydayness is rendered so simply and concisely that an observer can hardly remain indifferent when looking at it. The painter seems uninterested in the precise delineation of the forms or the composition in general and rather more focused on how colour should mark the outlines and the different levels in the composition. The fineness of the result proves that Germenis had already mastered the academic technical bases, but at the same time had begun to form his own distinct viewpoint, somewhat abstract and with colour on the epicentre.