Lot 49: VLASSIS CANIARIS (1928-2011) Soutien-gorge mixed media 51 x 42.5 x

VLASSIS CANIARIS (1928-2011) Soutien-gorge mixed media 51 x 42.5 x 27.5 cm.

Provenance Galerie Bama, Paris. Private collection, France. A crucial player in the dialogue within the Greek and international modernist avant-garde, Caniaris since the end of the 1950s worked with canvas, plaster, clothes and figures made of wire and all kinds of discarded objects that related to the current political conditions. Through his works he constantly strove to capture the spirit of the times and accordingly made his criticism though his unconventional, distinctive and sometimes rather surprising (for that time) visual language. In Soutien-gorge, composed of two garments (top and bra), a ribbon and a rod so distinctive within his oeuvre, Caniaris focused on ‘... the texture of these unconventional materials and their transformation into formal vocabulary,’ while retaining interest in ‘... showing that the conventional boundaries of the painting have been disrupted and that the inner material ultimately dictates the outer shape’.1 Caniaris was never interested in art as art. Far more, he was always occupied with the question to what degree art or, better, artistic work might be a means to win perceptions and make them vivid.2 1. H. Kambouridis, G. Levounis, Modern Greek Art. The Twentieth Century, Athens, 1999, p. 170. 2. M. Fehr,The Concrete Realism of Vlassis Caniaris: Outline an Artistic strategy, 1991, p.1.