Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, September 20, 2021: Yiannis Moralis, a Greek visual artist, sculptor, painter (#1369)

Yiannis Moralis (1916 – 2009) was an important Greek visual artist and part of the so-called "Generation of the '30s"

Moralis was born in Arta, a small city in north western Greece where he lived with his family until they moved to Athens in 1927. By then, Moralis had already decided that he wanted to be an artist and had enrolled at the preparatory Sunday school of the Athens School of Fine Arts (ASFA). He was accepted as a full-time student at ASFA at the age of 15, where he met Yiannis Tsarouchis and Nikos Nikolaou, two young artists who would go on to become household names of Greek Modernism. These two relationships proved highly significant for Moralis, as they became close friends and life-long collaborators. As mentors to Moralis, who was six years their junior, both Tsarouchis and Nikolaou showed him the ropes of creative life.

In 1936, Moralis received a grant to develop his studies in Rome, after which he travelled directly to Paris to study fresco and mural work at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts and mosaic at the École des Arts et Métiers. He returned to Greece in 1939, following the declaration of World War II, but these travel experiences had afforded him the chance to encounter the work of international artists and the aesthetic innovations of the time. This proved crucial in the development of his curious and constantly-evolving body of work.

The Greek Avant-Garde
Back in Athens, the young Moralis made a living by putting his figurative painting skills to good use and securing portrait commissions. He also joined the cultural avant-garde of the country: a loose group that gathered writers, poets and visual artists under the banner of the “Generation of the 1930s”. This group was key in the development of Greek Modernism; by combining movements such as surrealism and abstraction with the vernacular style, they created a beguiling mix of innovation and tradition.

These experiments coincided with a surge of hope and optimism in Greece, as the country emerged from the strife of World War II and the subsequent Greek Civil War which ended in 1949. This newly-acquired sense of national confidence was accompanied by a desire to establish a Modern Greek identity, in which art was to play an important role. Moralis, alongside Yiannis Tsarouchis, Nikos Ghika and Nikos Engonopoulos, was a significant player in this cultural endeavour.

By 1948, Moralis had become a tenured professor at the ASFA. This position not only secured him an income, which permitted him to explore more daring creative avenues free from constraints, but also allowed Moralis to mentor and nurture successive generations of young Greek artists, thus cementing his reputation as a highly influential figure in his country’s art scene.

Early Figurative Works
In 1949, seeking to test and expand the possibilities of figurative painting, Moralis set up the Armos Art Group, accompanied by his long-standing friends and colleagues Tsarouchis, Engonopoulos and Hadjikyriakos-Ghika.

During this time, one of the recurrent motifs in Moralis’ output was the female nude, such as the figure seen in Femme nue assise. His detailed studies of the female form can be seen as a modern take on Ancient Greek beauty ideals, so vividly captured in the classical sculptures and reliefs that still fascinate us to this day.

His fascination with the female nude continued into the late 1950s, when in 1958, he was selected to represent Greece at the Venice Biennale, alongside Tsarouchis and sculptor Antonis Sochos. Despite the prevalence of abstraction in that year’s Biennale, Moralis’ contribution remained deeply engaged with the human figure.

A year later, Moralis was commissioned to create the marble reliefs for the façade of the Hilton Hotel in Athens - a building that aimed to combine Modernist architecture with classical details. This marked the beginning of Moralis’ collaborations with Greek and international architects which would endure throughout his career. Other forms of cross-disciplinary partnerships that Moralis pursued during this period include his set designs for the National Theatre and the Greek Dance Theatre.

Towards Abstraction
From the late 1950s onwards, Moralis started to incorporate abstraction into his figurative compositions. This was a gradual shift, an early example of which is his 1960 painting Composition, which combines figurative and abstract elements in blue, pink and grey shades. The work confronts the viewer with an enigmatic scene which could be interpreted as an interior space, an artist’s atelier or perhaps a window towards a lush garden.

By the 1970s, Moralis’ evolution towards abstraction was firmly established. Typical of his late period are geometrical compositions painted in striking colours that boast tantalising titles such as Erotic (1977 and 1995) or Full Moon M (1977-78) - all three of which were sold by Bonhams. These works invite viewers to observe their intertwining, deconstructed shapes as limbs: a total abstraction of Moralis' figurative fascination.

Building a Collection
In the last few years, Moralis’ work has been increasingly sought-after by collectors beyond the confines of his native Greece. His work Erotic from 1977, for example, achieved £525,250 at Bonhams’ Greek Sale in November 2020.

Across his long and prolific career, Moralis produced a wide range of works that can appeal to diverse budgets and interests at auction. In the upcoming Greek Sale in Paris, for example, a small bronze sculpture titled Le Couple produced in 1975 has an estimate of €3,000 - 5,000, while Quatre scènes de mythologie avec Hercule, a 1956 acrylic on paper work depicting mythological scenes, has an estimate of €15,000 - 20,000.

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