CHRONIS BOTSOGLOU.The unyielding sincerity of empathy in Andros MEMORIES LOST IN THE DREAM

The summer of 2023 will be full of artistic and visual art in Athens and on the island of Andros, giving the opportunity to the art-loving public to get to know aspects of both contemporary Greek art and French art of the 20th century.

From July 2 to October 1, 2023, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Andros will present a retrospective exhibition of the work of Chronis Botsoglou (1941-2022), an important figurative artist of contemporary Greek art. More than one hundred works will be presented, including pencil drawings, pastels, oil paintings, watercolours, bronze, brass and plaster, covering the period from 1953 to 2018, i.e. more than sixty-five years of an extremely productive artistic career.

The title of the exhibition is inspired by the unyielding honesty he often imposed on himself, which he never ceased to combine with empathy. As the curator of the exhibition Maria Koutsomallis said at the press conference : “The element of fragility, of vulnerability that emerges from his works has not only to do with
the model he poses each time. It also intimidates the viewer, who, faced with an unyielding honesty of empathy”.

A worthy successor to the masters of Vincent van Gogh, Alberto Giacometti and Francis Bacon, Botsoglou placed the human being at the centre of his work and made it his aim to render the ways in which he perceived him with the greatest possible subjectivity. His works are in the image of his written texts: they
were born out of asceticism, suffering and a genuine concern for honesty.

The exhibition is divided thematically into sections. These pictorial chapters, as the artist himself defined them in his written texts, especially in the collection “The Colour of Study”, are all present in the retrospective.
His studies at the School of Fine Arts in Athens, and then in Paris, provided him with the academic basis he needed to find his way and paint the first youthful works exhibited in the exhibition. In the landscapes of Lesvos he balances inorganic matter, sky and vegetation, managing to render the colours of the
Mediterranean with exceptional fidelity. The 1970s are defined by the passage from neo-realism to existentialism. He joined many artistic groups, trying to integrate everyday life into art and approached the New Realism movement, which placed photography at the basis of artistic inspiration. An important theme of the exhibition is erotica. Eroticism is a central axis of Botsoglou’s art. In the 1980s, man becomes the centre of his art, especially at the time when he was working in an old lyotribe as an ascetic.

The exhibition also has many self-portraits from various periods. In 1993 Botsoglou began the Nekya series, which he completed in 2000, a polyptych consisting of 26 works. The source of inspiration is Rhapsody l of the Odyssey, in which Odysseus – who is desperately trying to summon the dead seer Tiresias from the
underworld to find out whether he will return to Ithaca – is initiated by Circe into the ritual of necromancy, which consists of the temporary return of the dead from the realm of Hades. In this way, Botsoglou paints his memories of persons who were dear to him, such as his parents, his uncle and aunt, the poet Nikos Kavvadias, the painters Nikos Paralis, Lefteris Kanakakis (as”Fisherman of Santorini”) and Asadur Baharian. In the first portrait of the series, The Necromancer, he gives his own characteristics. In 2003 Botsoglou began the series References, in which he pays tribute to his teachers by creating fictional portraits of them.

Although among his influences he has already mentioned many names of every nationality and era, in this series he limits himself to representations of Giannoulis Chalepas, Giorgos Bouzianis, Vincent van Gogh, Chaïm Soutine, Alberto Giacometti and Francis Bacon.

The tone of the catalogue, as well as the exhibition itself, is set by “Brotherly Thoughts” an imaginary dialogue between Botsoglou and his teachers, which highlights the brotherhood between the artists in terms of their concerns and expectations, as well as the way they saw the world.

INFORMATION ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

CHRONIS BOTSOGLOU “The unyielding honesty of empathy”
Curator of the exhibition.
Duration: 2 July-1 October 2023
Opening hours: Daily 11.00-15.00 and 18.00-21.00, Monday 11.00-15.00
Monday afternoon and Tuesday: closed