Καθιστή Γυναίκα

000042 Kyrillos Veniadis, Seated woman, n.d., oil on canvas, 134 × 166 cm

Kyrillos Veniadis was born and raised in Chios, studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts (1957-1961) under Yannis Moralis, collaborated with Spyros Vassiliou (from 1958 to 1972) and later left for Canada. Two of his paintings belong to the collection of the Municipal Gallery of Chios. Based on their style, both should be dated to his first Greek period, i.e. the years before his emigration. The first painting depicts a seated young woman holding a white board (probably she is drawing, since her gaze remains fixed on the surface in front of her). She is in an indeterminate, strange blue space, while the dark figure of another person can be seen behind her. The rendering of the figures is realistic—probable the painter used a photo as his source—but the scene does not belong to the realm of the real. Veniadis experiments with magical realism, a movement rooted in surrealism, but his is also influenced by pop art and advertising; he ultimately creates a dreamlike image. Thus, the artist inscribes himself in the broad body of neorealist trends that flourished during the Greek junta period (1967-1974), as a reaction to the dominance of abstraction in Greek art since the early 1960s, and as a veiled critique of the abnormal political situation.