Nicos Baikas Senza titolo (Montagna con pecore)

cm 115 x 151,5

Nikos Baikas received his training in Greece and Italy during the 1970s: his interest in the American art of the time was enriched by his knowledge of Arte Povera and its conceptual implications. The artist found them to be analogous to ancient Greek philosophy. The result is his great figurative drawings in pencil, the artist’s favorite medium because of its immediacy. He used this medium to depict philosophical paradoxes, with characters placed in enigmatic situations. Between the 1980s and 1990s, his style became gradually denser and darker, and he exacerbated the chiaroscuro by exerting more or less pressure on the pencil, to the point of simulating the effects of a mirror-like metallic sheet, while the subjects became more stylized and abstract. In the mid-1980s, the artist fell in love with Leon Battista Alberti’s theories on perspective, which he studied in great depth after his Italian stay. "Senza titolo (Montagna con pecore)" (1987) is intended to be a figurative metaphor of Alberti’s visual pyramid: in this case, it is represented by a conical mountain half-covered with white forms, which, on closer look, can be recognized as sheeps.

No

M. Diacono, The obscure light of exactitude, exhibition leaflet (Boston, Mario Diacono Gallery), Boston 1987. P. Colombo (ed.), Nicos Baikas, exhibition catalogue (Geneva, Centre d’Art Contemporain), Geneva 1994. Nicos Baikas – From the Portalakis Collection, exhibition catalogue (Heraklion, Basilica of St. Mark), Athens 2001.

Foto Roberto Galasso

Purchased from Galleria Fabjbasaglia, Rimini

Work on Paper