Description
Artist/Maker: Kostas Kampouropoulos (1939-2018)
Object/Materials and Techniques: Oil on canvas
Date: Painted between 2007-2016
Dimensions: H. 50 cm. x W. 40 cm.
Art style: Portraiture/Romantic elements with surrealistic expressionistic structures/Abstract art
Current Location: Private collection
Curator’s note: A reduced painting from a series inspired by Richard Wagner’s epic tetralogy project operas ‘The Ring of the Nibelung’, in an opera act of which the painter had once participated as a bass singer.
As an homage to German and Norse mythology, herein he depicts a detail from the second of the four music dramas ‘The Valkyrie’; a moment where one of the most renowned characters in Richard Wagner’s opera, Wotan, the legendary Germanic deity, embraces one of his daughters a Valkyrie.
As a great lover of lyric music and classical opera, the painter is generally inspired by strategies of musical composition. More specifically, in this painting, colour gradations and softly abstracted forms aspire to emulate musicality and provoke contemplation. Notable, however, is his characteristic style of gentle colour scheme and softly brushed contours, through which he succeeds in evoking deep emotion and sound eerie sense from this mythological scene.
[ The four works that form Richard Wagner’s cycle ‘The Ring of the Nibelung’ are:
- ‘The Gold of the Rhine‘
- ‘The Valkyrie’
- ‘Siegfried’
- ‘Twilight of the Gods‘ . ]
