GEORGIOS BOUZIANIS

(1885-1959)

Garçon assis avec un bras levé

Footnotes

Provenance
Heinrich Barchfeld collection, Leipzig.
Herbert Marwitz collection, Munich.
Private collection, Munich.
Christies London Greek Sale of 16 December 1997, lot 72.
Acquired from the above sale by the present owner.

Literature
The artist's letter to H. Barchfeld, Munich, October 5, 1929 (listed).
The artist's letter to H. Barchfeld, Paris, May 31, 1930 (mentioned).
F. Michos, ed., Giorgos Bouzianis, Letters to H. Barchfeld, National Bank of Greece Cultural Foundation edition, Athens 1989, p. 163 (mentioned), p. 318, fn. 107, no. 25 (listed).
D. Deliyannis, Giorgos Bouzianis 1885-1959, Adam editions, Athens 1996, no. 75, p. 285 (catalogued), 116 (illustrated).
Art and Market, Epta Imeres – Kathimerini weekly magazine, March 13, 2005, p. 19 (mentioned).


This magnificent canvas, one of the most alluring paintings by Bouzianis ever to appear in the auction market, shows why the artist was widely acclaimed in Germany as a prominent figure of the avant-garde in the late 1920s. In an article published in the Leipziger Abendpost daily, Dr. Hebert Hoffmann referred to him as "a great European,"1 while Dr. Hans Nachod writing in the Neue Leipziger Zeitung noted: "Only but a few artists in our time dare to pursue their ideals with such unwavering devotion as the Greek painter Georgios Bouzianis, who for many years endured a solitary life in Munich for the sake of his art. His work shows a man full of fire and longing who defies everything, even himself, in order to better serve art's divine purpose. The sensitivity with which he handles colour is really amazing. One is given the impression that the colours he uses are built up on an artistic edifice in order to reach the highest possible point of energy. What sets him apart from other expressionists is his focus on purely pictorial issues, his discipline regarding the meaning of chromatic values on every part of the canvas. In every single brushstroke he has full command of his formal means."2

In the spirit of 'Die Brücke' (The Bridge), one of the most revolutionary movements in the history of modern art, Bouzianis undertook to "bridge" the objective features and inner life of his sitter with his subjective eye and personal response to the subject. He rejected academic formulas, decorative details, and fleeting colour sensations, while stressing abstractive style, unbroken colour, and dynamic form. He sought an intuitive expression, which he felt lay somewhere between description and imagination.

In most of his pictures from this period, as Seated figure with raised arm so clearly demonstrates, the element of distortion, which played a key role in expressionism, is kept on a very tight rein. The artist avoids sentimentality or any theatrical device which might charge his forms with too obvious a pitch of heightened feeling. There are no facial contortions and grotesque excesses, no falsification of the subject's essential integrity. Yet, his works are full of strong feeling, marvellously disciplined by artistic intelligence and continuously subordinated to aesthetic demands. As perceptively noted by the painter C. Botsoglou, "the expressive thrust of his works relies exclusively on pictorial means."3

Seated figure fills the surface of the painting with its statuesque calm, generating a tension between bodily volume and pictorial space that animates every part of the canvas. This kind of tension is akin to Picasso's 'classic phase' in the 1920s, when the artist's predilection for plastic volumes in the treatment of the human figure was revived by his exposure to Greco-Roman sculpture. As noted by Y. Tsarouchis, "there is something classical in the works of Bouzianis, because for a Greek the classical is a natural state of mind."4 Elaborating on this remark Y. Psychopedis notes: "Bouzianis's figures are tied to reality; they do not lose their identity becoming archetypal forms or nightmarish masks. His work emanates a nostalgia for the classical, a nostalgia for a lost and constantly sought balance."5

1. H. Hofmann, "Yorgo Busianis, Ausstellung seiner Aquarelle bei Barchfeld", Leipziger Abendpost daily, 6.9.1928.
2. H. Nachod, "Yorgo Busianis", Neue Leipziger Zeitung daily, 15.3.1930.
3. C. Botsoglou, "Reflections on the Work of G. Bouzianis - A Confession" [in Greek], Anti magazine, no. 302, October 25, 1985.
4. Y. Tsarouchis, preface to Bouzianis-Watercolours [in Greek], Agra - The Friends of Bouzianis edition, Athens 1982, p. 12.
5. Y. Psychopedis, "The Militant Introversion, Expressive Lyricism and Critical Spirit in the Work of Bouzianis" [in Greek] in Nostos, Kedros editions, Athens 2009, pp. 228-229.