17.03.1933–04.03.2014
Stass Paraskos
Stass Paraskos (1933–2014) was born in a Cypriot village into a peasant family, went to England at twenty and began there with work in a tea room and a restaurant. In 1966 police closed his exhibition “Lovers and Romances” in Leeds, and he was fined for obscenity. He later founded an art school in Cyprus that grew into the Cyprus College of Art.
Biography
In 1966, at the Leeds Institute Gallery, police came to the exhibition “Lovers and Romances” after a complaint from one of the visitors. The artist, Stass Paraskos, was charged with displaying obscene paintings under the Vagrancy Act 1838.
He was born on 17 March 1933 in Cyprus, in the village of Anaphotia. His father was a poor peasant, and Stass grew up the second of six children. In 1953 he went to England. At first he worked in London, reportedly washing dishes and waiting tables at a tea room on Tottenham Court Road, then moved to Leeds, where he became a cook in his brother’s restaurant. Local art students liked the restaurant, and they persuaded him to study. He entered Leeds College of Art without the required qualifications: Harry Thubron, head of the fine art department, noticed him and let him enrol. Paraskos became friends with Terry Frost, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham and Dennis Creffield. In St Ives, in Cornwall, he shared a studio with Barns-Graham for a time and then returned to Leeds. In 1957 he married Winifred Mary Pepper; they had five children, among them the artist Margaret Paraskos.
The 1966 trial drew the attention of the art world to the case. Herbert Read, Quentin Bell and Norbert Lynton spoke for Paraskos, but he was found guilty and fined; by one account, 25 pounds. A year later his works were shown in the group exhibition “Fantasy and Figuration” at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. Decades afterwards the Tate acquired the disputed painting; one review of the 2009 retrospective remarked that today it is hard to see why it caused such an uproar. To my mind, that is an accurate measure of how the sense of what is permissible has changed.
He taught at Leeds College of Art, in Leicester and in Canterbury. At Canterbury College of Art he became Senior Lecturer in Fine Art and then Head of Painting.
In 1969 Paraskos founded a summer school in Famagusta for British art students. After the events of 1974 it moved first to Kato Paphos and then to Lempa, near Paphos. There it developed into the Cyprus College of Art, and Paraskos became its principal. Artists and students from Cyprus, Britain and other countries came to the school. After finishing his work at Canterbury he returned to Cyprus in 1989 and continued to work with the college. In 2008 the University of Bolton awarded him an honorary doctorate for his contribution to art.
His painting is figurative but not naturalistic, with bright colours; his subjects often come from Cypriot village life, mythology and the history of the island. Critics find in it echoes of Cypriot folk art and Byzantine church painting, as well as the influence of Gauguin and Matisse. He made sculpture and assemblage works; from the 1990s he worked on a large sculpture wall at Lempa, next to the college studios. His works are in the Tate, in the Arts Council Collection, and in museums and the university collection in Leeds. Paraskos wrote in Greek and English about Cypriot culture, mythology and art. His books include “Cyprus of Copper” and “Aphrodite: The Mythology of Cyprus”.
He died on 4 March 2014 at his home in Paphos. The Cyprus Ministry of Education announced that his funeral would be paid for by the state: in 2005 he had been honoured for excellence in art. A street in Lempa was later named after him. In 2017 an exhibition of his work was held in Paphos, as part of the city’s programme as a European Capital of Culture.
Profile notes