Spyros Papaloukas

Spyros Papaloukas painted saints since he was a kid.

Orphaned from a very young age, he learned about hagiography from a local hagiographer before he was even 10 and at the age of 14 he went to Piraeus to continue studying hagiography. 

At the age of 17, he was admitted to the Academy of Fine Arts having the great masters Georgios Roilos, Georgios Iakovidis, Stefanos Lantsas and Dimitrios Geraniotis as his teachers. He continued his studies in Paris where he came into contact with all the avant-garde art of the time, including Cezanne and the post-impressionists. 

Returning to Greece in 1921, he follows the Greek Army in Asia Minor as official illustrator of the campaign together with Pericles Byzantios and Pavlos Rodokanakis. Sadly all the works from this period got lost and destroyed in Smyrna during the frantic evacuation. 

A year later, he flees to Mount Athos with his friend Stratis Doukas, writer, artist and representative of the Aeolian School of the Generation of the '30s. Tired from the war and sad about losing all his works from the Campaign he is looking for inspiration and spiritual refuge after the traumatic experience of the Asia Minor Catastrophe. There, in the solitude and blessed beauty of Mount Athos terrain, he will simply delve into the study of light and color, in true impressionist fashion. 

"One can express light by discovering levels as with harmonies in music. I used color as a means of expressing emotions and not as a transcription of nature. I use the simplest of colors... Nothing prevents composition with few colors, as in music built on only seven notes...'.writes the painter. 

Certainly, the Athonic landscape acted as a catalyst for him and an inspiration for the development of his artistic language. The Byzantine tradition gives him an impetus for creative and fruitful research. His deep knowledge of modern European painting and his corresponding love of the spirituality of Byzantine art helps him to blend the two worlds. In his art, modernity and Byzantine spirituality merge in a blissful body of work that draws from tradition and envisions the future. 

The landscapes of Spyros Papaloukas hold great significance not only for their beauty, but also for researchers of Mount Athos, as it captures buildings and locations, some of which no longer exist or have been altered. His paintings, therefore, serve as valuable documentation of Mount Athos in the 40s supporting the preservation of this cultural landscape.  

His engagement with Byzantine art leads to a creative reinterpretation, reflecting broader trends in European modernism- in Europe, artists like Henri Matisse and Paul Gaugin also find inspiration in Eastern traditions.  

In the years that follow Spiros Papaloukas does church murals of immense beauty, such as the metropolitan church of Evangelistria in Amfissa. He also delves into costume design for theatre productions and does murals for private and public buildings, such as the Blue Apartment Building in Exarchia. 

Bering recognized, he is appointed by the Mayor of Athens Kotzias a Director of the Municipal Gallery of Athens, planning to develop the Gallery’s collection to represent all modernist Greek painters, a lasting legacy for the city. He also teaches in the School of Architecture and the School of Fine Arts, focusing on passing on his learnings to younger generations of artists.  

 “Of all the Greek painters of his generation, the generation that first reacted to impressionism, Spyros Papaloukas remains the most “painterly.” The art of painting, the painter's natural passion for color and light, saved him from the pitfalls of graphic design that a painter will always encounter when he wants to assign to the drawing more burdens than those he can carry alone” artist Yannis Tsarouchis comments. 

In this exhibition explore over 600 works by Spyros Papaloukas, from all periods of his life, except of course about 500 of his works as a war painter during the Asia Minor Campaign which were unfortunately burned in the Smyrna Disaster. Landscapes, portraits, religious sketches and drawings illustrate a life of color and form, blending Byzantine spirituality with post-impressionist love of color.