‘The king of Attica Icarius introduces the grape to the shepherds’ 1944
Signed dated & titled egg-tempera on board 47 x 60 cm
€ 6.000 – 8.000
Monumental variant of the homonymous mural of the artist at the Athens City Hall (1937-1939). As Nikos Zias informs us in his catalogue raisonné ‘F. Kontoglou’ published by the ‘Commercial Bank’ in 1991, Kontoglou, who suffered deadly starvation during the war, and after having even sold his house to survive, around 1943-44, ‘he paints variants of his themes from the City Hall in mostly small sizes…’ for survival!
The right hand part of this masterpiece of 1944 describes another subject than that of the mural of the City Hall while the left, with some variations, presents King Icarios teaching the art of viticulture by giving the three shepherds the gift of Dionysus, the grape.
PROV. Priv. collection Athens