Βάρκες

000995 Nikos Yialouris, Boats, 1969, linoleum cut, 47 × 81 cm

The floating vessels were one of the most enduring and perhaps the most important topic of Yialouris's art. From his first efforts in drawing and painting, inspired by the landscape of Chios, until the end of his life, the boat, the ship, the dockyard returned in his engravings, paintings and drawings. Here is depicted a dockyard, i.e., a small shipyard for fishing boats. The hulls of the boats, like a strange catch spread out on the land, are arranged in an amphitheatrical arrangement, intertwined with each other, supported on wooden beams. A lover of small boats, the artist exploits the subject to render them from different angles, always emphasizing their curious but ingenious shape. He is also interested in capturing the decaying, the need for repair, but also, allegorically, the passage of time: how boats age, how the ways of navigation and fishing change, how old shipbuilding knowledge is lost. Stylistically, the work adopts Yialouris's cubist idiom, with strong distortions and hard, edgy lines, which nevertheless follow their own rhythm.

Bibliography: Manolis Vlachos, Nikos Yialouris. Drawings and Prints, Athens, 2010, p. 111 – as Caiques