Among the most talented and charismatic of Greece's second wave of postwar artists, Alexis Akrithakis followed uncharted paths and relished in an eccentric kind of humour vis-à-vis the futility of life. Developing a highly personal style in the spirit of pop art and surrealist automatism, he showed a preference for bold colours, while his childlike approach to painting endowed his work with a dreamy quality. 1 "A rousing cheerfulness emanates from the images of Alexis Akrithakis - an infectious cheerfulness inviting us to make merry in a humming meadow, to enter a multicoloured amusement park whose brilliant lights set off emotions. A microcosm in flowing motion, in constant action - a quotidian baroque feast unfurls before us; what the eye catches is transmuted into small, archetypal objects, revealing vague images of a first-hand experience of the world - as in a dream." 2

These amazing, typically untitled works convey an intense and primal sense of energy, reflecting that peculiar collision of expressionism and pop art that informs so much of Akrithakis's best work. Executed in 1984, the year the artist returned permanently to Athens after spending many years in Berlin, these inspired assemblages of heterogeneous imagery, gaudy colour and unexpected materials express an insistent search for joy and reveal the inventive mind of a restless child building his own toys.

"In the 1980s Akrtithakis's work is liberated from references to specific imagery, exploiting, with an increasingly intense fervour, the expressive potential of his materials. His wooden constructions, painted over with free, gestural brushstrokes and conveying the intense atmosphere of a folk fest (multi-coloured light bulbs, plastic flowers, broken mirror shards, etc.) are highly representative of his last period of assemblages and wooden constructions. Speaking about these works, the artist himself once said that as a whole they conjure up a landscape of nocturnal poetry. He was right indeed: somewhere hidden amidst this organised and yet so uninhibited personal expression lies a vision from Antoine de Saint-Exupery's Night Flight."3

1.See "Alexis Akrithakis", Art Magazine no.2, December 1993, pp. 22-45 and H. Kambouridis - G. Levounis, Modern Greek Art-The 20th Century, Athens 1999, pp.177-178.
2. C. Joachimides, 'Wonderings of a Daydreamer' in Akrithakis, exh. cat., Goethe Institute, Athens 1968.
3. M. Kotzamani, 'Bio-graphy' [in Greek] in Akrithakis, exh. cat. Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art and National Gallery - Alexandros Soutzos Museum, Thessaloniki - Athens, 1997, pp. 295-296.