Yiannis Moralis (1916-)

He is another of the consummate creators born at the beginning of the century. He is an artist who is interested less in the artistic styles of other periods or the solutions offered by contemporary Western European art, and more in his own inner relationship with his art, as we see in the way he portrays his subjects. Especially gifted in his technique, Moralis insists on depicting the human body realistically, and he succeeds in this thanks to the discipline and the faith present in his means of expression. Thus, in Seated Nude (1952) what impresses one immediately is the exact design, the deep understanding of chromatic relationships, the studied rendering of the model’s movement, as well as the balanced nature of the whole composition. In Votanikos, one of his earliest works of the 1930’s, we see the way in which he explored the function of color, before reaching his more mature works, such as Seated Nude. Moralis later progressed on to the geometric abstraction of the figure, and for decades his teaching at the Athens School of Fine Art was decisive for many of Greek post-war artists.

copyright 1996-97