Lot 31: Theofrastos Triantafyllidis (Greek, 1881-1955) Open air show 27.5 x 39.5 cm

Open air show
signed in Greek and dated 1944 (lower right)
oil on cardboard
27.5 x 39.5 cm

Perfectly illustrating Triantafyllidis’ signature style, this engaging work is characterised by freedom in the handling of paint, matched by gestural virility and boldness of execution, sharply defined outlines, abstractive design and total absence of facial characteristics. According to Professor A. Kotidis who prepared the monograph on the artist, “Triantafyllidis insists on blurred faces probably because they reflect his own introversion or even an artistic statement distancing him from the pronounced figuration represented by Kontoglou and the 1930s generation.” υ1

Setting up a hardly legible visual scene in an intentionally undefined space vaguely reminiscent of a village square or a quaint Athenian neighbourhood, his aim is clearly to reduce the sense of narrative and enhance the element of suggestion, conveying the expressionist need to submerge the human subject into a private, mystic and often ungraspable realm of visual metaphor. An inspired painter and leading expressionist who never ceased to enrich his formal means, Triantafyllidis lived a solitary life, remaining faithful to the romantic ideal of the committed avant-garde artist.

υ1. Kotidis, Theofrastos Triantafyllidis [in Greek], Thessaloniki, 2002, pp. 228-229