Description
Artist/Maker: Kostas Kampouropoulos (1939-2018)
Object/Materials and Techniques: Oil on canvas
Date: Painted between 2007-2016
Dimensions: H. 80 cm. x W. 60 cm.
Art style: Portraiture/Romantic elements with surrealistic expressionistic structures/Abstract art
Current Location: Private collection
Curator’s note: Portrait of an Italian soldier/officer of the Kingdom of Italy, after its unification and creation, wearing his characteristic red shirt -the ‘Garibaldini’ wore in lieu of a uniform- and holding a dog. A figure of a woman, a nobility, can be seen in the background. Italians dwelled for many years in the wider Balkan Peninsula. In Hellas, these soldiers were called ‘The Garibaldis’, mostly descendants of distinguished families and nobilities of the late 18th until late 19th century.
The restrained palette of dark tones of grey, varies only by the specific use of the white colour. The simplification of the forms and the freedom of the artist to abstract his ‘subjects’ seek to convey the ‘reality of the unseen’, something that is heavily embodied in the shadowed shape of the woman at the back.
