065. MORALIS Yannis (1916-2010)

‘Painted comment’ 1965

Signed & dtd. study in oil-tempera on paperboard 42×31 cm

€ 2.500 – 3.000

A particularly appealing “painted comment” by Yannis Moralis, a teacher at the Athens School of Fine Arts, which contains the artist’s distinctive dialogue between tradition and avant-garde. In 1965, ‘Ikaros’ publishers asked him to illustrate the collection “Poems” by Georgios Seferis with ten illustrations to be interspersed between the poems. Each piece was created after reading the collection in question highlighting various motifs allegories and symbolism on multiple levels. The blue and white in use constitute a symbolic dimension of his palette. Moralis’ painted commens of Seferis’s poems are works of art in their own right; poetry is simply their starting point. Seferis himself had written about this: “It has been rare for me to find these couplings of distinct arts successful. To me, they were always something like two horses tethered to the same coach and then suddenly pulling in opposite directions. So it was with great reluctance that I heard Icarus’ idea of asking Moralis to illustrate my poems. However, when, after several months, Moralis showed me his drawings I understood that on some occasions there might be no coach at all but two free horses galloping independently on a green meadow.(..)”