EXHIBITED:
Athens, National Gallery and Alexander Soutzos Museum, Akrithakis, 1997.

LITERATURE:
Maria Kotzamani, Akrithakis, National Gallery, Itanos Publications – J.F. Costopoulos Foundation, Athens 1997, p. 191 (illustrated).

An enchanting visual world of striking colours and bold shapes endowed with a dreamy quality and childlike wonder, this cheerful painting by the charismatic Akrithakis conveys an insistent search for joy while exploring an eccentric and witty collision of pop art and expressionism. As noted by art critic D. Zacharopoulos, "Akrithakis' output from the 1980s and 1990s features large-scale acrylics, revisiting expressionistic gesture and automatic writing and venturing beyond the suppleness of the hand and the pulse of drawing, almost as a deciphering and objectification of older writings, reminiscent, in an odd way, of Kandinsky's hieroglyphic and pictographic abstractions following his Blaue Reiter period. Acrylic paint is swift and similar to tempera, can be applied on large surfaces and, contrary to oils, is dry and mat, mineral and inorganic. Both decoration and writing, surface and insight, these acrylics venture into a higher dimension that secretly listens to the world beyond the artist's personal expression and rare quality." 1

1 D. Zacharopoulos, Alexis Akrithakis [in Greek], K. Adam editions, Athens 2005, p. 121-122.