Review of Theodoros Markellos exhibition in I Kalitheia (1980)

A graphic, physical presence of Greece.
The artist was not drawn into the printed
poetry for which his subject matter
is so well suited. In his paintings, he mostly
attempts to capture representatively and
to suggest the nature that
is hidden in old buildings, in the
waters and the sky. Houses, palaces,
waterways with boats and gondolas,
with a world that is not often shown
in paintings, or rather, inseparable
from the environment, hold in every molecule
the breath of people and the mys-
terious pulse of events and of the
images of the past.
The artist
conveyed the radiance of both
and in the two-toned atmospheres, he struggled
to express it through painting. The gate
of a neighborhood with its ancient
doors, a dusk, a twilight somewhere,
stir the emotion and warm it until creation
sparks or glows.
The style of these paintings is
more or less free brushwork. The colors and shades,
red, brown, yellow, dark, cyan
and blue-green, olive, compose a tangible result,
more or less vibrant depending on the subject. I mention a few representative works:
“Sunset.” Within the serenity of a shadowy whole,
where red is emphasized, there are houses
and a gondola. “Palace” (palazzo)
under construction. In the brownish hue that dominates,
the building, reddish and whitish, resembles a drama. “Sunset in Murano.”
Houses, canals. “Palace.” Characteristic
with the kinesthetics of the tested
doors according to his own vision, the creaking
balcony that spans the entire Canal
of the house. Winter on the Grand Canal.
Cyan domes, in the water,
palaces for the gondolas. Olive-colored
neighborhood. From here and there, a canal
with boats, a three-story landscape, with some
figure in a window, a tree, and next to it, a lower, strange
building with dark doors and steps leading
into the canal. Opposite, a three-story
building, reddish, yellowish, with attics
and chimneys.
At the Venetian Exhibition, T.M.
also displayed three large, older
oil paintings of his, which in some way, vary or rather, despite their
self-contained expression, disrupt the
visual landscape of the hall. One is
a self-portrait of the artist, with a palace,
whose entrance harmonizes with the
surroundings. The other, Venetian palaces,
brings to mind that somewhere there, in one
of the aristocratic or wealthy houses,
the spacious old man reflects on his life
and on what he did. He wears a rich
brown sack, something red underneath
and his thick mustache falls down.
One hand is resting behind
on the back of the chair and in his
tense expression with half-closed
eyes, it is as if all the years of Venice
have gathered together.
The third oil painting, of a
woman, is a wonderful nude, a work
from the artist’s stay in Spain.
The young woman has her hands behind her back and her
slender nude body turned to the right, with eyes
that glance sideways as if slightly wild
beneath the somewhat disheveled curls
that fall from both sides, with barely visible
on the left their movement. She has a gold drachma
on her arm and the path of the sea
gives with IDO - there reddish
shades, that give you greater vitality. One of the daughters
of Cordoba or Seville, with Andalusian
and Moorish blood.
EPAM. KAOURIS
"KALITHEA"
6-9-1980