Yiannis Kolefas: Journey in the art of the mosaic 1927 – 1986
Byzantine & Christian Museum (Ministry of Culture)
Athens, Greece

28 March– 17 June 2007

by Rea Cris

The Greeks have a wonderful tradition of preserving their tradition. Byzantium art and more specifically iconography (referring to its original definition, as that of painting icons) are still important mediums in Greek art. This recent retrospective hosted at the Byzantium and Christian Museum (B&CM) celebrates the life and work of an artist who is considered to be Greece’s first academically trained conservationist of mosaic art, Yiannis Kolefas.
Originally trained as a painter at the Athens School of Fine Art, Kolefas won a scholarship from the Greek government in 1959 to study for a PhD in conservation in Ravenna. His work at the very same B&CM between 1965 and 1974 would allow him the materials and experience to pioneer methods in restoration and conservation. But first and foremost, Kolefas was an artist.

Kolefas’s earlier paintings, at times resembling Cezanne, demonstrate that he struggles to find a personal style. Due to his work as a conservator and his extensive travelling around Greece, his art would evolve to mix Byzantium imagery with his desire to record and express folklore existence. His home island of Epirus is a recurring theme as he painted storyboard-like scenarios of marriages and the indubitable use of matchmakers. The Epirus Marriage series are comical renditions of a now long abandoned tradition with fluttering family members popping in and out, the omnipresent matchmaker and the disputably happy ending of the wedding procession. Through the 1970s, Kolefas would paint numerous landscapes of Greece, fluctuating his painterly style between a severely correct perspective and a imaginative and colourful childlike blotches.

Alongside painting, Kolefas also used the mosaic technique, especially to represent the female figure - a subject matter he had struggled with as a painter. He also branched out to use other materials for his mosaics such as pebbles, which render the subject matter more human. The original mosaic material of cut glass and stone renders edges sharp and angular and unintentionally makes the human form stiff and irregular. The smooth and rounded form of the pebbles, soften the contours and blend the colours more agreeably. Gossip (1975), done completely in pebbles, casts the viewer into a Plato’s Cave, where we look admiringly onto a more pure and enduring form of this vice. Kolefas’ mosaic pinnacle would be his seventy-five-meter mosaic mural housed in the University of Thessalonica, which depicts the entire history of the city and is possibly the largest modern mosaic.

It is touching and revealing to see a artist not only preserve his historical artistic traditions but attempt to breath new life into the medium by incorporating it into his own artistic practice and existence. I can only hope that someone else will continue where Kolefas left off.

www.culture.gr - (click on museums – alphabetical index – B&CM)
http://www.eikastikon.gr/psifidota/kolefas_en.html
http://www.helleniccomserve.com/preservinghistoricalmosaics.html

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