68. 68AR Alecos Fassianos (Greek, 1935-2022) Nicola e il fantasma/ Les passants/ Le spectacle signé 'A. Fassianos' (en haut à gauche) huile sur toile 162 x 130cm (63 3/4 x 51 3/16in). Peint en 1972. signed (upper left) oil on canvas Provenance Iolas Gallery, Milan (based on labels on the reverse). Private collection, Athens. Expositions Venice, XXXVI Esposizione Biennale Internationale d'Arte, Greek Pavilion, Fassianos, Mytaras, Panourgias, Piladakis, June 11 - October 1, 1972 (based on label on the reverse). Littérature Fassianos, Kedros editions, Athens 1980, p. 104 (listed), p. 47 (illustrated), back dust jacket (illustrated). T. Spiteris, Art in Greece after 1945, Odysseas editions, Athens 1983, no. 25 (illustrated). Erourem nagazine, no. 4, March 1996, pp. 131, 171, 177, 194 (details) (illustrated). Mandragoras magazine, no. 28, September 2002, p. 17 (illustrated). Full of life and vibrancy, monumental yet familiar, universal yet quintessentially Greek, Fassianos's ubiquitous rider looks as immobile and eternal as a relief sculpture on an Doric metope, demonstrating the artist's power to seize the eternity of the moment through timeless forms. Captured in sharp profile and set against a solid background, the emblematic rider and the "passants" below are remoulded into archetypal figures echoing the timeless forms of ancient Greek vase iconography. As noted by French writer J. Lacarriere, "like in ancient pottery, Fassianos's modern figures are captured in an eternal contre-jour which renders them both precise and timeless. These figures inhabit a land which might well be Greece, a totally luminous and airy land, an Aeolian land. The wind which tosses the hair of Fassianos's figures is the same wind which pervades Homer's epics and fills Odysseus's sails on his way to meet the Sirens."1 Likewise, Jean-Marie Drot, former Director of the French Academy in Rome notes: "Fassianos sets out to transform the most elemental aspects of everyday life, the most familiar figures into divinities, retracing, in reverse, the ancient tradition that allowed the great Olympian gods to assume the guise of mortals and mingle with them, talk to them and even seduce them without scaring them."2 Magnificent in its simple grandeur and utterly characteristic in style and sentiment, this top quality work encompasses the defining elements of Fassianos's unique expressive language, unfolding the qualities that established him as a master of contemporary figurative painting. 1 J. Lacarriere, "A Shadow Play" in Fassianos - Mythologies of Everyday Life, exh. cat., National Gallery - A. Soutzos Museum, Athens 2004, p. 24. 2 See Alecos Fassianos, Athlos, Mythos, Eros [in Greek], Kastaniotis editions, Athens 2004, p. 82.