Yannis Tsarouchis Γιάννης Τσαρούχης
Born January 1910 in Piraeus Died July 1989 in Athens
...this painter dared to look for Hermes not on mount Olympus but in the 'Olympus Coffee-House' (1)
Rather than merely recording an era, Yannis Tsarouchis created art in which depictions of ordinary people and landscapes were transformed, becoming part of a larger mythological construct, illuminating what he himself called the ‘complex ingredients that compose ‘Greekness’. He was such a great artist that I was a little disappointed to find his grave tucked way back in Section Twelve of the First Cemetery rather than in the Plaza at the entrance reserved for ‘distinguished Greeks’. No matter; his work speaks for itself. Tsarouchis was articulate and self aware, never afraid to express and defend his own aesthetic and how it fitted into the broader history of art, especially the history of art in Greece.
He was the consummate alchemist, melding the Renaissance, impressionism, post-impressionism, Hellenic sculpture, Byzantine art, Greek folk art and more into the body of his work in a way that is both contemporary and timeless.
He was fortunate in his early mentors and experiences. Many of his contemporaries had those same opportunities and yet, there is only one Tsarouchis.
His Life
Yannis Tsarouchis was born in downtown Piraeus at the corner of Louka Rallis street and King George Avenue at a time when the city’s streets were still lined with neoclassical houses. His formative years (until the age of 17) were spent there. He was the second son of merchant Athanasios Tsarouchis and Maria Monarchides. His maternal aunt was wealthy Despina Metaxa whose husband was the brandy baron. So, no silver spoon in his mouth but he did come from a comfortable environment where ambitions could be realized. By all accounts, he was a happy child whose earliest dream was to become an acrobat for the sheer fun of it.
His early artistic efforts reveal a young man eager to experiment in all the new genres, an eclecticism he would always defend on the grounds that ideological consistency should not dominate a painter’s development. His first public showings consisted of a set design and watercolours at Nikos Velmos’ Art Asylum in 1928 and 1929 when he was still a teenager. Nikos Velmos was a self taught artist, actor, writer, anarchist and cultural iconoclast. He had opened the ground floor of his home at 21 Nikodimou Street in the Plaka to give young, often unknown, artists a chance to show their work and, at the same time, to snub his nose at the entrenched Athenian establishment with his periodical Fragkelio. It was the perfect environment for budding artists to gather, share ideas, and foment new ones. Tsarouchis’ contributions to the Art Asylum were well received.
The Velmos home is still there - a little bit of an older Athens, facing the Electra Palace Hotel.
In 1928 he enrolled in the Athens School of Fine Arts where he would study until 1935. He was extremely lucky in his mentors there who included sculptor Thomas Thomopoulos (1873-1937) and the modernist painter Constantinos Parthenis (1878-1967).
Parthenis posing with his portrait of Julia Parthenis
It was a busy time. Between 1930 and 1934 he worked at Parthenis’ studio and as an assistant to icon painter Photis Kondoglou (1896-1965), experiences that would have a tremendous influence on his own work.
Kondolgou (Κόντογλοu ) introduced him to the simplicity, form, and spirituality of Byzantine Hagiography.
The skewed perspective, two dimensionality, high seriousness, the sense of timelessness and even the ‘weightlessness’ of Byzantine icons were all elements that can be observed again and again in Tsarouchis’ work even if his subjects are secular.
1980: Sailor seated at a Table with a Coffee Cup
In the early thirties Tsarouchis met Angeliki Hadjimichali who taught him about folk costume and Eva Sikelianou who taught him weaving. These women were important in the new artistic movements in Greece after the Asia Minor catastrophe. Eva was married to poet Angelos Sikelianos and Angeliki’s home in the Plaka had become a focal point for the intellectuals of that era. These connections were a learning experience and a portal into the closely knit cultural world of Athens in the 1930s. It was during this period that many of the elements which would characterize his life’s work were already coming together.
Angeliki in folk costume on the left and Eva, being Eva, on the right
In 1934 he began working on stage design with director and innovator Karolos Koun (1908-87) who became a lifelong friend. Creating stage sets and costumes for theatrical productions in Greece and abroad would become a hallmark of his long career and may have made him better known to the Greek public than his paintings.
1935-6 saw him in Paris studying Renoir and the Impressionists. There, he met sculptor Alberto Giacometti, etcher Max Ernst, the Greek painter Theophilos and the very influential Teriade, art critic, patron of the arts, and publisher.
Teriade (aka Stratis Elevtheridis from Mytilini)
Before returning to Greece in 1936, Tsarouchis visited Pompeii – another influence to be absorbed.
In a short piece like this one, so much has to be left out. Tsarouchis was a prolific artist, juggling many genres, subjects, and mediums to perfection. What follows is a small taste, presented in chronological order, along with his story.
His Work
The Thinker in 1936 is a reference to Rodin’s work of the same name. Instead of representing a majestic figure in Dante’s Divine Comedy, Tsarouchis presents an ordinary young Greek man about town in a striped suit, lost in thought, a cigarette dangling from his right hand and his shoe resting casually on the bottom rung of his chair. I love the way that Tsarouchis had to alter Rodin’s parallel treatment of the legs so that his young man could accommodate his legs to those notoriously uncomfortable coffee shop chairs! (2)
1936: The Thinker
1937 Italian Nude Sitting in Profile
1938 saw his first solo exhibition in Greece on Nikis Street and his work presented at a Pan Hellenic exhibition at the Zappeion. During that same year, he designed the set for MarikaKotopouli’s production of Stella Violandis.
He was still only 28.
1940 and the War
Tsarouchis fought on the Albanian front where his painting talent was put to work camouflaging a bridge!
On the Albanian Front
He experienced at first hand the terrible waste of youth that war entails. It would influence many of his later paintings which would depict young men, often with wings, in mourning, melancholy, or fatalistic poses. There is always a sense of sacrifice in these paintings.
During the German occupation, he made ends meet as best he could by creating stage designs and restoration projects.
Tsarouchis rarely painted current events, preferring the suggestiveness of the symbolic and the mythic. But one of his paintings is an exception of sorts. It depicts a situation in 1944 when Greek communists were being rounded up by the Nationalists and Security battalions. It is done in his own inimitable style.
1944: The Arrest of Three Communists, First Days of the 1944 Uprising
After the war, he was back to work painting and creating sets for the National Theatre.
1948: The apotheosis of Athanasios Diakos
The above was shadow theatre artist Evgenios Spatharis who had dressed in the part, holding the Greek flag, after a performance. Tsarouchis was a great fan of the shadow theatre. (This angel has a hair ribbon, de rigueur in the Orthodox iconic program for angels.)
1948: Seated Sailor and Reclining Nude
1949: Portrait of Miss N.A. With Two Roses
In 1949 he became a founding member of the Armos Group (3) of artists which held its first exhibition at the Zappeion where he showed eight works painted between 1938 to 1948.
1951 saw paintings dating from 1936-39 and 1948-50 exhibited at the Galleri d’Art du Faubourg in Paris, followed by a 1953 group show of Armos at the Zappeion. The Iolas Gallery in New York featured his paintings during this period. It was a connection that would make him financially independent.
The Neon (still there in Omonia square), the Parthenon and the Mavrokephalos coffee shops were featured in many of his paintings, venues habituated by working class youths, and sailors who held such a special fascination for Tsarouchis.
1953-7: Two are on display at the National Gallery in Athens
In 1958 he presented work at the Venice Biennali along with sculptor Antonis Socho and painter Yiannis Moralis. The same year saw his paintings at the Guggenheim in New York and at the National Museum of Modern Art In Paris. That year he somehow found time to create the sets and costumes for Alexis Miniotis’ Medea starring Maria Callas. It would be fair to say that, by 1958, Tsarouchis had truly ‘arrived’.
In 1959 Tsarouchis designed the set and costumes for Aristophanes’ The Birds directed by Karolos Koun. It was intended for the Herodes Atticus Theatre. The scheduled production was cancelled by presidential decree. Dressing the ancient priests as Orthodox priests had ruffled certain feathers in Athens. It was, however, a resounding success abroad.
The Birds
This was not Tsarouchis’ first run in with the authorities. His homoerotic themes made authorities uncomfortable. In 1952 his painting of a Sailor on a Bed with a Naked Man was taken down from an exhibition in Athens at the insistence of the Royal Hellenic Navy which considered it an insult to their institution. (4) Tsarouchis complied at the time because he feared that, if he did not, the police would come and destroy the entire exhibition. Such was the temper of the times.
Tsarouchis was gay, as were so many of the great Greek artists of the era. Being gay in the art world in Greece was pretty generally accepted (except during bouts of authoritarian leadership) when more puritanical views prevailed in the broader society.
Times have changed.
1964: ‘Lovely White Flowers’ inspired by the Cavafy Poem (5)
1964-7: Flowers
Everyone has his or her favourite Tsarouchis. I am especially fond of The Offering of Two Winged Men. The scene is ancient and modern at the same time, and tantalizingly suggestive – pure Tsarouchis in every way from the butterfly wings to the stances, the facial expressions, and the nature of the ambiguous offering itself:
1965: The Offering of Two Winged Men
1966: Spirit Mourning
When the military dictatorship took over in 1967, Tsarouchis moved to Paris and continued to live there until 1975, painting and designing sets for La Scala and Covent Garden.
1969: The Four Seasons
While in France, he established an art academy for French and Greek students, giving them the opportunity to paint with live models, perhaps in memory of his own start at the Art Asylum.
1975: Set Design: a Delphic landscape for Euripedes’ ‘Ion’
After 1975, he divided his time between France and Greece until 1983 when he moved to Greece permanently.
1980: Portrait of a Young Woman with a Coral Necklace
In 1981 he had already established his own Tsarouchis Foundation at his home in Maroussi, to show his work and to encourage the study of the body of his work.
The museum is at 28 Ploutarchou Street in Maroussi. Telephone 21 0806 2636
His Death
In 1989, while preparing the sets and costumes for a production of Euripedes’ Orestes he died suddenly at the age of 80. What a life! Tsarouchis must have known at least 90, percent of the cultural elite of Athens (maybe more) and, in that interaction, everyone gained. His analysis of their work was as perceptive as it was fascinating. And he loved to dance. Greek people who perhaps knew nothing about his art, knew that.
Dancing the Zebeikiko in 1955
Tsarouchis in costume as an archbishop a few days before his death
His own words make a fitting epitaph:
I am an explorer, trying to find within my true faith, and in my work, the style that will be most in accord with my own self.
It is a family Grave
Section
12, Number 445
The Map
Footnotes
(1) the Tsarouchis foundation web page.
(2) Rodin’s Thinker
(3) In 1949 Tetsis along with Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas, Yannis Moralis, Nikos Nikolaou, Nikos Engonopoulos and Yiannis Tsarouchis, established the “Armos” art group.
(4) In blog research one thing leads to another. Why are sailors especially associated with homosexuality? Apparently it is an old trope referring to all those men cooped up on ships during long voyages. It has had a long run...(5) Lovely White Flowers
He went inside the cafe where they used to sit together.
It was here, three months ago, that his friend told him:
'We're completely broke - so hard up, the two of us,
that we're stuck with the cheapest places.
I can't go around with you any more - it's no use hiding the fact.
I've got to tell you, somebody else is after me.'
The 'somebody else' had promised him two suits, some silk handkerchiefs.
He himself, to get his friend back,
went through hell rounding up twenty pounds.
His friend came back to him for the twenty pounds-
but along with that, for their old intimacy,
their old love, for the deep feeling between them.
The 'somebody else' was a liar, a real bum:
he'd ordered only one suit for his friend,
and that under pressure, after much begging.
But now he doesn't want the suits any longer,
he doesn't want the silk handkerchiefs at all,
or twenty pounds, or twenty piastres even.
Sunday they buried him, at ten in the morning.
Sunday they buried him, almost a week ago.
He laid flowers on his cheap coffin,
lovely white flowers, very much in keeping
with his beauty, his twenty-two years.
When he went to the cafe that evening
he happened to have some vital business there
to that same cafe where they used to go together,
it was a knife in his heart,
that dead cafe where they used to go together.
Sources
Here the English speaker is spoiled for choice, even on the internet. Tsarouchis was a prolific painter and art critic. A short entry like this one can only scratch the surface and hopefully create interest. A good place to start would be the website of his foundation: https://tsarouchis.gr/en/
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