83. Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika (Greek, 1906-1994) Palette landscape signé 'Ghika' (en bas à gauche); signé et porte le cachet (en bas à droite) acrylique sur papier contrecollé sur toile 44.5 x 76cm (17 1/2 x 29 15/16in). Peint vers 1957-1961. signed (lower left); signed and stamped (lower right) acrylic on paper laid on canvas Littérature K.C. Valkana, Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika, His Painting Oeuvre, Benaki Museum, Athens 2011, no. 253, p. 291 (catalogued and illustrated). Across twisted diagonals and tangled verticals fall the shapes of acanthuses, thistles and thorns, while the crooked stone walls that inform so much of the Greek landscape, seem to thrive on the rugged terrain.1 Both the natural and the manmade environment are in a state of perpetual becoming, constantly expanding and contacting, so that the whole composition is immersed in a perpetually changing and revived atmosphere. As the schematic undulations of the landscape ascend in petrified waves, the pictorial space shrinks and the horizontal tilts into the vertical, echoing the Byzantine backgrounds that tend to unfold upwards instead of receding in depth. 1 See P. Leigh Fermor, "The Background of Niko Ghika" in Ghika, Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture, Boston Book and Art Shop, Boston 1965, pp. 25-44.