In July 1973, when Yannis and Zoe Spyropoulos took the decision to move their world to one of the prettiest spots in Attica and devote themselves with passion to the building of their new house, none of us suspected that it was ordained that they should be creating for generations to come one of the first personal museums in Greece. That was why all those of us who were friends of the couple looked on askance as a building which was pioneering in its concept, the work of the artist himself, with wide doors and windows, with spacious atriums and with rooms designed to museum specifications, rose on what was then a deserted hillside.
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All the components of the house in Ekali followed the same philosophy: the shell and the rooms were released from any superfluous decorative elements so that the entire oeuvre of the artist could be placed within them with all the functionality of a museum. The ground floor, with its monumental dimensions and movable surfaces, is thus dominated by the artist's larger compositions, which blend harmoniously, through the openings, into the exterior space.
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There, in a setting composed of the plants and trees of Greece, Yannis and Zoe Spyropoulos brought sensitivity and love to the task of arranging the sculptures they most admired and were fond of. These sculptures include a superb composition of stainless-steel spirals and water by Yorgos Zongolopoulos, Nestor of the Greek sculptural scene and one of its most eminent artists.
It was in this place of sublime aesthetic value that Yannis Spyropoulos was to live and work, creating in absolute harmony with his principles and beliefs, with the constant solidarity, boundless devotion and tenderness of his beloved Zoe - his zoe, his life, as he so often called her. In this home, the two of them together succeeded in creating a perfect blend of artistic simplicity, of warmth that sprang from the soul, and of the care and affection of their incomparable hospitality. It was no accident that from the very start there was a constant stream of visitors - friends, pupils, students, art historians and critics, museum directors from all over the world, intellectuals and art-lovers - who made the trip up to Ekali to savour the unique atmosphere and enjoy the company of the great anchorite and his helpmeet.
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Spyropoulos also took part in the most notable international art events: the Biennales of Sao Paolo, Alexandria and Ljubljana, visual art exhibitions in Montreal, Osaka, Vienna, Lausanne, Minnesota, Helsinki, Rome and Bologna. Nor should we forget that he was the first Greek artist to participate - in response to a special invitation - in the Kassel Documenta exhibitions, in 1964, when the event was at the height of its renown.
Above all, however, it is our duty to remember that he is - so much the worse for Greece - the only Greek artist to have won a UNESCO prize, for his Oracle, at the 30th Venice Biennale, where his co-exhibitors included names such as Fautrier, Hartung, Buzzi and Vedova, which have dominated the world of art since that time and, as we know, were the supreme practitioners of abstraction.
Among the other distinctions awarded to Yannis Spyropoulos at various times, we should not overlook the Gottfried von Herder prize, awarded to him by Vienna University in 1978.
 In the forest (1958) |
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It is not hard to see that in all the phases of his career Spyropoulos displayed an absolute functional continuity, an almost religious dedication to the vision of abstraction, the roots of which can be discerned even as far back as his first student landscapes. Nature, in all its unique variety of forms in Greece, was in any case an inexhaustible source of inspiration and creativity for the indomitable, charismatic figure that was Spyropoulos. Even in the works of his transitional period, Spyropoulos retained many of the features of the beautiful natural world.
This transition from realism to abstraction is a feature that deserves attention in the works of Spyropoulos. Although it involved a process of constant transformation, there were some constants that never changed:
Where the matiθre is concerned, we could note that in the artist's early works it continues to allow the brush-stroke to be distinguished. Later, however, it does not permit us to discover either how the background (that most solid of surfaces) was prepared or what phases it had gone through before completion.
The artist arrived at this technical perfection after many years of research and constant inquiry, but it was never an end it itself in any period of his creative career. It was no more than a wonderful tool, a personal medium through which he could achieve his objectives. That is why Spyropoulos always put his incomparable artistic refinement into the service of his purpose, which was to imprint on the surface of the painting his inner world, a world made beautiful by its vibrant lyricism.
His emotional and certainly not cerebral approach to the world is easy to distinguish in all the phases of his work. Even in his 'dark period', his hope for a better future is clearly signaled by the triumphant presence of the color red. The works of Yannis Spyropoulos possess the divine gift of high art: their dynamism is apparent even from a distance, and they are a harmonious blend of architectural structure with pure form and color.
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 Taygeta (1961) |
Spyropoulos did not paint in order to gratify others; he did so out of a holy obsession to find an absolute type of painting in which color would determine both form and theme. That theme would be deprived of any reference to the real world, of anything to which we are accustomed in the order of things. In his search, the artist becomes one with his art and succeeds in capturing within it the entire cosmos. It should not escape our notice that the entire endeavor of the leading exponents of abstraction was to extrapolate the 'real' beyond the forms taken by the apparent, and that the abstract art movement, as a whole, operated against that background - that is, by rejecting any element which contained a reminder of external reality.
In a conversation among friends about the work and personality of Yannis Spyropoulos, the talk came round to his roots, and we wondered about "where his works were coming from". After a long and interesting discussion, we all concluded that it was difficult to read the influences to be seen in his creations, which in themselves often compel us to turn back to the great days of the Renaissance, or perhaps to Rembrandt.
 The Image S (1986) |
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In his unselfish solitude, Yannis Spyropoulos served his vision conscientiously, striving perpetually to capture perfection - a perfection which did not have the effect of deriving his works of poetry, lyricism, or the emotion which was to be his companion to the end of his days. His life came to a quiet end on 18 May 1990, before Spyropoulos had had a chance to enjoy his dream come true.
But his beloved life-companion, loyal to the ideals they shared, continue to work towards the establishment of the foundation on which they had agreed, where the oeuvre of the artist Spyropoulos would remain intact so that the general public - and young people in particular - could come to know it, could study it. And so it came to pass that the Yannis and Zoe Spyropoulos Foundation was established by Presidential Decree in 1991, with a seven-member Board of Management and Zoe Spyropoulos as Life President.
The complex and interesting plans of the Foundation include activities in a wide range of cultural fields over and above pure academic work and research or the enhancement of its archive and library. It has put the wishes of its Founders into effect by establishing annual prizes and honorable mentions for young artists, who are judged by a special committee. Naturally enough, however, the principal objective of the Foundation is to create the optimal conditions for publicizing and presenting the work of Yannis Spyropoulos himself.
Yannis Spyropoulos, the poet of abstraction, brought an absolute sense of duty, tireless assiduity, a high moral awareness, unaffected modesty, consistency in word and deed, an almost Doric cast of mind and an authentic visual gesture to bear upon underscoring what I believe to be the concept of the true artist: the artist who is a natural, unforced leader, who guides us towards viewing his work with the respect it deserves and with proper admiration.
