The Greek Painter- George Rorris PDF

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The Greek Painter- George Rorris...

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The Greek Painter: George Rorris "I depict what is visible to me. What is visible to me is only to me. I firmly believe this. I believe that the world, to use a phrase by Schopenhauer, is a representation, and that each of us sees it when we try it, in its own way. I do not think we see with our eyes only. I think we see with our eyes that it is an instrument to see our body the same and our own the deepest it is. So in this sense I paint not what is visible to everyone, but what I can see ... “ George Rorris was born in Kosmas Kynourias in 1963. He studied painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts (1982-1987) with teachers P. Tetsis and G. Valavanidis. He continued his studies with scholarships (from the V. and E. Goulandris Foundation and from the Baccala Brothers Foundation) at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris (1988-1991) with teacher L. Cremonini. He collaborated with the Center for Letters and Arts Apopsi (1996 - 2002) and collaborates with the Simio Art Group teaching painting (2002 until today). Since 1988 he presents his solo exhibitions ("Medusa" 1988, 1993, "Medusa + 1" 1993), while he has also taken part in group exhibitions in Greece and abroad. In 2001 he was honoured by the Academy of Athens with the award for "Young Painter under 40". In 2006 he was awarded an honorary distinction for his work by the Public Benefit Foundation "Alexandros S. Onassis". His works are in important public and private collections. Rorris's artistic creation could be divided into five distinct sections-periods, as they emerge through the chronology of the painter's solo exhibitions1. His work begins from the first period at the School of Fine Arts, 1985-1988, which includes, among others, "Study in Fine Arts", "Selfportrait", "Ioanna", "Two women", "Naked woman in front of the mirror" . Later, between 1989-1992, he moved to Paris, where he depicts his personal space, his atelier, through eight different rooms-versions. For this period, Rorris has said that "it was a strange year with multiple stimuli. Stimuli of another city, another country, another language, other people, another way of life ". Here belong the ones painted in tones of yellow, blue and white, Kitchen, Hall, Hangers, Chair Back, Pink Sofa etc. The third period finds him again in Athens and, in contrast to the work of Paris, he now deals with the depiction of the urban landscape from which he excludes the human form. Typical works of the period are, "Study for Kotetsosyrma", "Kotetsosyrma (garden in the house of Argyrios Kanakis)", "Outdoor laundry", "Morning between 8 and 12", "Small Pylon", "White wall", " Egaleo Hill "," Liosion Street "," Construction Site “etc.

During the next period there is a re-shift in the interior, in the personal room which houses figures of ordinary everyday people through portraits-monographs of faces and bodies. Recently, the artist depicts a series of naked female bodies. In them the search for individual identity seems to be combined with the body as desire and the eroticism of the female body. In this context, Marina Lambraki-Plaka observes that “ Rorris is that kind of extinct painter. A born painter of form.” And indeed in this section, he paints almost exclusively the human form in the space in works such as "Antonia Prifti poses", "Iris Kritikou with yellow shoes", "Kristi Vlohaitopoulou with a red jacket", "August-September" and others. If we look at his work as a whole, we could say that it is a creation that moves in the context of realism. The artist himself mentions this in an interview he gave to Irini Venieraki that "while I like the word and I like what one can imagine listening to the word realism, however I cannot accept the term, because it defines absolutely a piece of 19th century art. I would have accepted it in the past, but now I would like it to be respected that my own works are not characterized by any kind of social reflection. It does not mean that it does not characterize me, but I cannot transfer the social or political concerns that concern me to what I do. I do not have this option. I cannot. So we would say, I would probably say, that they are works that are characterized by an attempt to learn a kind of painting language, which is in a way a tool for conversation with the past of this art. I found this way of learning this language. To stand in front of things and try to paint what I see each time according to the possibilities I have that time.”...