Constantinos Parthenis

(Greek, 1878-1967)

Landscape, 1899 45.3 x 75 cm.

Footnotes

Provenance
Private collection, Switzerland.

This atmospheric landscape view was painted—and later purchased—in Vienna where Parthenis resided from 1896 to 1903. In the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the artist had the chance to live in an important centre of European modernism and become familiar with the Viennese Jugendstil. Here, the poetic atmosphere, subtle colour harmonies, absence of human figures and solemn remoteness underscoring the landscape's eternal nature, leave no doubt that Parthenis was akin to such pivotal exponents of the Viennese School as Egon Schiele, whose dominant themes of loneliness and the sense of being forsaken, often found unequivocal expression in his depiction of barren trees symbolising the human predicament.

As noted by Zacharias Papantoniou, the great scholar and Director of the National Gallery in Athens (1918-1940), "Parthenis is not a painter who depicts nature. He is a painter who interprets nature. He uses it to express his moral world. He influences it. He recomposes it. He shapes it. He imposes his feelings on nature."¹ As the artist himself declared: "Nature inspires me. I use it as an element of my art. It's not the one that is in control. The world around us is our palette, through which we will convey our emotions, our thoughts."<sup>2

1</sup> Z. Papantoniou, Valkanikos Tahydromos daily, 11. 5. 1920.
² E. Fertis, "C. Parthenis, the Master" [in Greek], Zygos magazine, no. 11-12, September-October 1956, p. 26.