Riches Abound in Yannis Tsarouchis Retrospective: Dancing in Real Life

Since its opening in 2018, the Lincoln Park art gallery Wrightwood 659 has consistently presented exhibitions that expand the city’s exposure to exceptional art.  Although many of the artists the gallery features possess international renown, all have not been widely familiar to local arts enthusiasts.   As a result, Wrightwood exhibitions often take on the demeanor of wonderfully surprising introductions. Yannis Tsarouchis:  Dancing in Real Life, which opened May 6^th, is the most recent in that line.  With more than 200 original works included in the retrospective, the Wrightwood exhibition is the largest to be presented of the artist’s work outside Greece.

Regarded as one of his country’s greatest artists of the 20^th century, Tsarouchis excelled in numerous artistic formats beyond painting.  He’d developed a very early love of opera and theater and went on to design theatrical sets and costumes from his late teens through his late 80’s.  As a painter, his talent allowed him to master the techniques characteristic of classic Grecian art as well as art forms revolutionizing western Europe; including post Impressionism and cubism.  Studying and working under the eye of highly accomplished mentors in both the theatrical world and visual arts, Tsarouchis gained notice and acclaim in each. 

It’s natural that much of the artist’s work reflects the cultural essence of his roots.  Tsarouchis’s nationalistic focus may partially explain why much of the rest of the world doesn’t know his work.  Despite being considered “the cradle of western civilization”, Grecian influence in the arts hasn’t migrated as thoroughly as its precepts on democracy.  Byzantine art and the flat anti-naturalistic style of religious iconography are not well understood or appreciated in west.

Tsarouchis not only excelled at executing classic forms in the Greek tradition; he eventually began to extend that proficiency and swath it in modern contexts.  His subject matter could be unconventional; or to some, controversial.  But the line connecting the contemporary and the ancient is always perceivable.  Influences gleaned from his studies in France and Italy are detectable in the technique he uses in his portraits and profiles. His admiration and exposure to Matisse seems to have had a strong impact in the way he projected mood, bearing and atmosphere in significant areas of his art.    

Born in 1910 and actively engaged in the creative process until his death in 1989, the arc of the artist’s productive life is captured beautifully in this showcase of his work.  Yannis Tsarouchis:  Dancing in Real Life allows you to watch how an artist grows, change, gravitate to specific themes, play with light and perfect technique through the alteration of backdrop, tone and perspective.  Although the exhibition spans nearly the entirety of his career, it encompasses only a small fraction of his output.  Still, walking through the various galleries, segmented to highlight episodes and notable periods of Tsarouchis’s artistic life, is like taking a stroll through both time and the artist’s creative mind.

It also proves once again that artists are creatures of many dimensions who can and do provoke a wide range of commentary.  More mainstream observers emphasize the artist’s importance in advancing a contemporary approach to Greek art.  Others see him as a sensualist artist, best known for his paintings of “young men and strong women”.  This exhibition can be lauded for providing many examples supporting both positions.  It can also be appreciated for devoting generous space to the artist’s love of theater and his contributions to it.  Considering theater “visual acts of poetry”, he could be painstaking in the detail he would lavish on his theatrical renderings. The Triumph of Claudius (1972) is exceptional for its beauty and linear boldness.  Reducing grandeur and majestic spectacle to miniature scale forces you to enter a brilliantly fantastical world through a wormhole.

Much of Tsarouchis’s work can leave you feeling transported.  He became enthralled with zeimbekiko, the eagle dance, as a young man and remained drawn to it for the rest of his life.  A dance whose origins go back hundreds of years with origins linked to the warriors of Anatolia, it is traditionally danced exclusively by men as solos or in pairs.  Improvisational, passionate, often flamboyant and focused to the point of severity, the dance is inescapably dramatic.  Tsarouchis completed scores of representations of zeimbekiko dancers and the retrospective includes some of the most striking and powerful.  Nearly life sized, dark to the point of brooding, the images have a coiled intensity that’s captivating.  More significantly, they carry a timelessness one associates with things that are peerless; making them the kind of revelation one always enjoys sensing when experiencing great art.

Yannis Tsarouchis:  Dancing in Real Life

May 6, 2021 – July 31, 2021

Wrightwood 659

659 W. Wrightwood Ave.

Chicago, IL   60614

https://wrightwood659.org/