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 He is the leader of the movement for
the revival of Byzantine tradition in Greece, an artist
who worked towards this end in practice as well as in
theoretical texts. Born in Aivali of Asia Minor, he
brings with him to Greece a relatively long tradition,
which he tries to revive not only as an artist but also
as a writer. His works Byzantine Landscape, Portrait of
Papadiamantis and Captain Aivali, all of which belong to
the Municipal Art Gallery, are some of the best examples
of his work, and indeed they belong to those in which
Kontoglou used all his powers of renewal and revival.
Later, he entered a period  of
rather conservative reproduction of Byzantine artistic
style. In Byzantine Landscape we see the way depth is
created according to the Byzantine tradition. The rocks
are rendered in the same fashion, and we see the
replacement of reproductive exactitude, either with the
artistic simplicity of popular art or the codes of
Byzantine art. |
