With Obelisk Gallery, London, 1950
Private Collection, Athens

Literature:
N. Petsalis - Diomidis, Ghika-Catalogue Raisonne 1921-1940, Athens 1979, no. 33, p. 122 (illustrated)

In the late twenties, Ghika painted a series of works depicting balconies in Athens; a typical, well-known feature of everyday life interpreted in his post cubist language. It is an interesting subject, for it centres on shapes, space, perspective, the human presence or the absence of it. Removed from the rest of the building, the balcony has a value of its own. In a surrealistic scene a woman opens the window of a fauvistic black room. There is an interplay between the sparkling yellow and green colours and the black that absorbs their energy, as well as the shapes that create a new geometry, the vision of the artist. The unusual perspective, the two dimensions, the figure drawn in outline as if it were a reflection of the bright external colours, bear an essential archaic quality.
In 1927 Ghika, who was still in France (a distinguished member of the avant-garde) was decoding, accepting or rejecting influences, here assimilating the elements that were to accompany him for the rest of his life.