It’s an almost mystical experience, one’s initiation into the artistic universe of acclaimed Greek painter Georgios Xenos, who uses single strokes and brush tracesto conquer time and space.
Georgios Xenos
Art is a revolutionary act
Text: Evi Kallini
Born in Athens in 1954, from 1976 to 1982, he studied at the ÉcoleNormaleSupérieure de Beaux-Arts, Section des Arts Plastiques. Georgioslabels his decision to leave behind Greece to study in Paris a “personal revolution.” In fact, he was preparing himself for both Schools of Fine Arts, in Paris and in Athens. But, “I was accepted in Paris straight away and thus I left to pursue my dream,” he recalls.
After all, he showeda penchant for it early on, as he was always good at drawing, even as a young boy. “I would paint and draw free from any rules; I was, from a young age, insubordinate. And I consider insubordination a badge of honor, even to this day,” he explains. The years in Paris were among the best of his life. He traveled a lot, including to Florence and London, where he had the fortune of meeting Francis Bacon, a “great personality of great generosity.” He met many more men and women of arts, letters and culture who were instrumental in his trajectory and left a mark on his work.
I ask if it was Georgios who chose painting or painting that chose him. “Both. My life and my art merged into one. From the moment I realized the potential of the brush, the freedom to record your thoughts into art, it was inevitable. I started taking a notebook and pencil everywhere I went – I still do.”
In 1983, he returned to Athens, where he remained until 1987. One year later, he moved to Germany, till 1992. With workshops both in East and West Berlin, he bore witness to the historical events that led to the Fall of the Berlin Wall. He has exhibited artwork from this period at the Winckelmann Museum in Stendal, and Pergamonmuseum, Berlin. “I experienced Berlin with its Wall and its Fall. I experienced a historic event for myself as well as for my self-expression. It was a moment when the world was changing. The Wall was a symbolic occurrence that delineated the boundary between here and there; a liminal point; a tragicality.”
In Berlin, Georgios met eminent figures from the realms of art and culture, including archeologist Dr. Max Kunze, Director of Pergamonmuseum, and Dr. RaimundWünsche, Director of the Glyptoteck Munich. The years following the Fall of the Wall, Georgios’s themes leapt to a new era, drawing inspiration from Greek Mythology. In 1993, he made his final return to Greece, setting up his base of operations in Athens.
Throughout, Georgios’s artistic trajectory has been exceptionally rich and illustrious, including plenty of solo exhibitions in leading museums and spaces of culture in Greece and abroad. For example, one could mention the Winckelmann Museum in Stendal, Germany (curated by Dr. Max Kunze and Stephanie-GerritBruer, 1991) and Pergamonmuseum, Berlin (curated by Dr. Max Kunze, 1992), as well as at the Municipality of Athens Gallery, titled “Georgios Xenos, a Retrospective” (curated by Nelly Kyriazi, 1993); the Benaki Museum, titled “A Geometry on Hold – The Black Box of Mankind (curated by Dennis Zacharopoulos, 2009); the Epigraphic Museum of Athens, titled “A person’s shadow is their culture” (curated by Dr. ViviVassilopoulou, 2011); the Archeological Site and Museum of Delphi, titled “Passers-by” (curated by Konstantinos Papachristou, 2012–2013); theStavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, titled “Passers-by and seven gates” (2021);Megaron – theAthensConcert Hall, AnnexM, titled “Georgios Xenos – Places of Contemplation” (curated by Anna Kafetsi, 2022–2023); and at the Kapodistrian Orphanage Former Prison of Aegina, titled “The Freedom of Confinement” (curated by Dr.ViviVassilopoulou, 2020–2023).
Art itself is a revolutionary act that contains within it transgression, tragedy, freedom – that disrupts.
Georgios Xenos has also participated in group exhibitions of international importance, such as “Kunst, Europa” at Kunsthalle (Berlin, 1991), “Greek Cultural House” (Stockholm, 1999), “ANTIDORON. The EMST Collection” at Documenta 14, (Fridericianum, Kassel, 2017), “After Babel – Omen” (Athens Concert Hall, AnnexM 2018–2019), while his works can be found in private collections and museums in Greece and abroad.
The art of Georgios Xenos art manages to besimultaneously minimal and maximalist. Demonstratingan admirable balance, he manages toaddress those spiritual questions that we ponder since birth. It’s an art akin to poetry, as its brushstrokes could easily be the words of a poem, building ladders leading to the heavens vertically and horizontally, in perpetuity – ladders that elevate humans. In his works we distinguish repeated motifs, transitional figures, the passage, the metaphysical, elements that reference the sacred and the divine, elements of Greek culture, the sea, travel, human pain and despair.
Hisinspiration? Humans. “From a very young age, I have observed and researched humans. I consider it a type of luxury to exist in this vast world, with all these conditions, and to try to digest international information – which is by no means easy – by creating today.” Conflict and revolution, he says, occupy a primary position in his work, as “art itself is a revolutionary act that contains within it transgression, tragedy, freedom – that disrupts.”
In addition to painting, this multifaceted artist also does sculpture and installations, as well as musical composition. How does he decide on the form and medium of a new piece? “After the ideas, concepts, versions, designs, drafts and notes comes the time when all this will be realized on a different scale. Along the way a piece may require any material – ink, acrylics, colors, metals, rocks, cables, videos, sounds – to be completed as either a wall piece or an installation,” he explains. He loves big surfaces as, “they do away with the narrow boundaries of a small frame. They are out of bounds. They offer me the freedom that I need when I paint. Let’s say I can fit into them. By repeating my traces on the painting surface I create a choreography; a vibration; a pulse. Repetition has a unique dynamic; It has rhythm. This draws me in.”
His work is a celebration of black and white. Although he has used colors in the past, the contrast of black and white eventually took over. “A black line is all colors. It’s like a loud word, a stroke of the bow that defines what you want to say. It’s a psychogram that carries the image of emotion. It has memory,” Georgios declares.For every new piece, the defining moment is when he stands in front of the white surface and makes the first brush stroke. “That is the moment of great agony, when you forget everything and are led by the subconscious and by memories.”
And art, in addition to being a revolutionary act, produces a social model, thus creating culture. Guided by notions of freedom throughout his career, he achieves balance within his personal space of contemplation, “where one manages one’s course into the infinite in whatever way is required.” His own path, as he disarmingly admits, is that of disobedience. After all, it was “what put me on the path I chose to serve.”
