YIANNIS MORALIS (1916-2009) Eroticon

YIANNIS MORALIS (1916-2009)
Eroticon
signé en grec et daté "1988" en bas au centre; signé et daté "Yiannis MORALIS / 1991 / Athènes/ Grèce" au revers
huile sur toile
166 x 115 cm. (65 3/8 x 61in.)

signed in greek and daté "1988" lower centre; signed and dated "Yiannis MORALIS / 1991 / Athènes/ Grèce" on the reverse
oil on canvas
Provenance
Private collection, Athens.

Expositions
Athens, Zoumboulakis Gallery, Moralis, March 1992, no. 6 (illustrated in the exhibition catalogue and on the exhibition poster).
Thessaloniki, ZM Gallery, Moralis, Summer 1992 (illustrated on the exhibition poster).

Littérature
Sima magazine, no. 7, March-April 1992, p. 26 (illustrated). Arti magazine, no. 10, June-July 1992, p. 247 (illustrated).
C. Christou, Moralis, Adam editions, Athens 1993, no. 248 (illustrated).
Alevevan magazine, no. 7-8, January 1993, p. 19 (illustrated).
I Would Like to Give you my Heart Forever, Zita-Mi 1955-2010, Thessaloniki 2010, p. 98 (shown on the 1992 exhibition poster).
M. Emmanouil, History of Art from 1945 in Five Chapters, Kapon Editions, Athens 2013, p. 51 (illustrated).

Moralis seeks a geometric ideogram for love.
M. Lambraki-Plaka

This fascinating work was included in the artist's 1992 solo exhibition in Athens. When the show opened it created a stir. In his review—one of the most insightful essays ever written on Moralis—Professor D.N. Maronitis noted: "I visited the Zoumboulakis Gallery the morning after the opening, before the spots, which often seem like interrogating the paintings with their intense light, were lit. And suddenly I saw Moralis's works looking out with their clear vision, dominating with their proud solitude. His paintings take us directly to the wondrous world of pure vision, which emerged, however, from the world of touch. That's a way to somehow explain the geometry of bodies and colours that constantly abstract and are abstracted to reach their final shape and immutable tone."¹

Reviewing the show, art critic V. Karaiskou noted: "The erotic encounter of two people, life's greatest mystery, stripped from any external element that threatens to alienate it, is depicted in a simple and, therefore, essential way. The figures are broken down to their constituent parts and then reassembled; as a result the lines take on a symbolic import and respond to each other by means of their contrasts and similarities. Any dryness or harshness that could result from such an austere, constructivist approach, is avoided due to the artist's sensitivity."²

Demonstrating solid structure, purity of form, disciplined rhythm, harmonious proportions, and ingenious interplay of gently flowing curves, Eroticon achieves a striking balance between physical passion, lyrical feeling and intellectual thought. As Nobel Laureate Odysseus Elytis once noted, "Moralis was always driven by a longing for the monumental, bestowing even on his most sensual conceptions a feeling of mystery and a Biblical sense of the sacred. Memories and encounters are repeatedly distilled until they blend into forms of great simplicity and precision."³

True to his classical Greek heritage and yet utilising a formal vocabulary balanced to the scale of modern sensitivity, Moralis sought the realisation of a classical ideal, the discovery of a universal measure for logos and pathos. "Moralis uses abstraction to isolate the core of human existence, to create through his art a language of symbols. He paints the Aegean Sea, the isle of Aegina, the union of human bodies: evocative forms that echo age-old memories, freed from the burden of their physical existence."⁴

By focusing on the essential, Moralis expresses what is permanent and universal. "In his fragmented and elliptical figures and in the wealth of his linear compositions and chromatic statements, he neither describes nor narrates but expresses and interprets the forces of creation. Above all else, his paintings are at once erotic, profoundly sentimental and poetic. In them one may trace a progress from earthly to heavenly love, from the sensual aspects of the subject to the universal and eternal, to the metaphysical and transcendental."⁵

¹. D.N. Maronitis, "The Gift of Vision" [in Greek], To Vima newspaper, March15, 1992.
². V. Karaiskou, "An Attempt to Approach Yannis Moralis's Work" [in Greek], Sima magazine, no. 7, March-April 1992, p. 20.
³. O. Elytis, preface to the Moralis exhibition catalogue, Iolas-Zoumboulakis Gallery, Athens 1972.
⁴. Y. Bolis, Yannis Moralis [in Greek], Ta Nea editions, Athens 2007, p. 79.
⁵. C. Christou, Moralis, Adam editions, Athens 1993, pp. 20, 33, 34.