Archontariki lavra Mount Athos 1924

Spyros Papaloukas painted this interior, Archontariki lavra Mount Athos, with what looks like oil on canvas, building up soft planes of gentle colour. The paint handling is gentle and tentative, with the colours mixed right on the canvas itself. You get the sense that he’s not trying to make a big statement but is thinking through colour, tone and form. Look closely and you can see how much variety there is in the colour. It’s almost entirely variations on a pale, muted palette, but they all play off each other, lilacs against creams, browns, and muted reds. The paint is applied in a very thin, washy way, especially in the walls, that makes everything luminous. It’s like you could reach out and touch the walls, the table, the objects, but you wouldn’t quite be able to grasp them. I am reminded of the work of Giorgio Morandi who made endless quiet paintings of bottles. It’s as though Papaloukas is showing us that art is a conversation, a kind of call and response of forms, colours and ideas across time.