Telemachos Kanthos

Biography

When Kanthos went to Athens in 1929, he meant to study architecture. After a short time he gave it up for painting and printmaking.

He was born on 24 February 1910 in Alona, in the mountainous Pitsillia region of Cyprus. His father, Christodoulos Kanthos, was a teacher who painted himself: his school drawings had once won an award at an exhibition in Athens. His mother, Eugenia Aravi, worked as a farmer. His younger brother Theodotos also became a painter and teacher. Kanthos finished primary school in the village and then attended the Greek high school in Famagusta.

At the Athens School of Fine Arts his teachers in painting were Spyros Vikatos, Dimitris Biskinis and Umbertos Argyros, and in printmaking Yannis Kefallinos. Among his fellow students were Yannis Tsarouchis and Nikos Engonopoulos. His studies were interrupted: from 1932 to 1934 he went back to Cyprus and taught at the high school in Famagusta. His first solo exhibition took place in Nicosia in 1931. The academic lessons, I think, meant less to him than Kefallinos’s prints and the painting of Cézanne, whom he studied on his own. From the summer of 1936, alongside his studies, he worked in the Aspiotis-ELKA graphic arts workshop in Corfu and Athens, and in 1939 he helped Kefallinos with his book “The Peacock”.

The war brought him back to Cyprus, and he lived there from then on. According to some accounts, he spent the first two years in Alona, drawing and cutting prints. From 1942 he designed sets and costumes for the newly founded Cypriot theatres “Lyric” and “New Lyric”, and drew portraits of actors. In 1942–1944 he taught at the Famagusta high school, and from 1951 to 1969 he taught art at the Pancyprian Gymnasium in Nicosia. His pupils included Rallis Georgakis, Kyriakos Liras and Philaktis Ieridis. In 1950 he visited London, France and Italy, going round museums and galleries; he repeated the tour of European capitals in 1963. In 1952 he married Zoe Charikleidou, and they had daughters. In 1956 he received a diploma in printmaking in Athens.

In 1964, together with other artists, he founded the Chamber of Fine Arts of Cyprus (EKATE). From 1969 to 1975 he sat on the educational service committee of the Cypriot Ministry of Education, and he often served on art committees of the ministry and other bodies.

After the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, Kanthos cut the woodcut series “Hard Times” (1976–1978). The sources disagree on the number of sheets: eleven or twelve. The series deals with the experience of Greek Cypriots who became refugees or lost relatives. The figures stand in a cramped, neutral space, without superfluous detail. In 1984 the series won a prize at the 15th Alexandria Biennale; by some accounts it was second prize in the woodcut category. In 1979 the Academy of Athens honoured him with a prize for his contribution to art.

His earlier prints were calmer: scenes of rural life built on the contrast of black and white. His painting, in oil and watercolour, is devoted to Cyprus: the mountains around Alona, village and town life. He mixed the ochres for his summer landscapes himself, blending Cypriot umbers.

After 1975 Kanthos worked as a freelance artist. He often went to Vienna, where his daughters lived, and made some of his best drawings and canvases there. A major retrospective was held at the National Gallery in Athens in 1982, and an exhibition at the Palais Pálffy in Vienna in 1991. He built a house of his own in Alona and stayed attached to the village to the end of his life. He died on 18 November 1993 in Nicosia. In 1996 a retrospective was held at the State Gallery in Nicosia, and in 1999 the director Paschalis Papapetrou made a documentary film about him.