Yannis Tsarouchis: The New Ideal Greek.

Yannis Tsarouchis: The New Ideal Greek.

Man with butterfly wings sitting on her heels, 1965

Yannis Tsarouchis is perhaps one of the most important Greek painters of the twentieth century, excellent art work contributed to portray and define the modern Greek identity. Yannis is a deeply sensual painter, his work is heavily influenced by the French Impressionists, is also Tsarouchis an important gay artist who filled his canvases with homoerotic images of vulnerable men despite their uniforms or athletic bodies.

Forgotten guard, 1957

Italiano naked sitting in profile, 1937

Sailor sitting and reclining nude, 1948

This painter was born in the port city of Piraeus, near Athens on January 13, 1910, Tsarouchis began his art studies in 1928 in the college of Fine Arts in Athens, where he studied under Konstantinos Parthenis, who instructed in the European avant-garde art and led him away from academic prevailing in Greek art of the moment. He also received classes Kontoglou Photios, who instilled a love of Byzantine art. However, it was a trip to Paris in mid-1930 that more deeply influenced Tsarouchis art. Immersed in the bohemian lifestyle of the era, the Greek boy drank in the art of his contemporaries such as Renoir, Manet, Picasso and Matisse among others.

January, 1973

September, 1972

David's Dream, 1968

Once in a war-torn Greece, Tsarouchis started painting young men in uniform who were preparing to defend their homeland. During the decade of 1940, Greece was a nation with modernist dreams but is still somewhat submerged in the nineteenth century, having gained independence from the Ottoman Turks in 1830 only. Tsarouchis was filled with a desire to express complex ingredient made up of Greek beauty.

Military police arresting Spirit, 1965

Young dressed as a dragonfly winged Eros, 1962

In this effort, his art became a complex synthesis between Greek art, Byzantine and modern French art. Combined technology and the vision he had learned from the Impressionists to the elements of classical and Hellenistic sculpture Byzantine painting she had loved since his youth. Yannis in his paintings capture not only the new Greek identity, the new prototype of the Greek ideals of beauty or contemporary but also captures a gay or homoerotic sensibility. Tsarouchis impressionist takes elements of ancient Greece and transforms them into a new form of culture, giving birth to a modern iconography of modern Greek man.

San Sebastian, 1970

Swimmer dressing, study for "The Great Beach", 1962

Tsarouchis was also loved theater and often worked as a designer of sets and costumes. In exile in Europe in 1967, hoping to years of military dictatorship in Greece, designed sets for theater productions at La Scala in Milan and Covent Garden in London, and in the Avignon Festival in France. After his return to his homeland in the mid 1970's, designed by acclaimed opera set for Franco Zeffirelli's production of Cherubini's Medea in ancient amphitheater Sibelinos.

The painter and his model, 1979

(No title?), 1967

Tsarouchis was very beloved in Greece for its contribution to Greek culture and for being a worthy advocate for the values of his country. In 1982, he established the Foundation Tsarouchis Yannis. When the artist died on July 20, 1989 in Athens, I bequeath his fortune to support the Foundation made in his honor.

Nude, 1950

Yannis Tsarouchis in old age.