Yannis Tsarouchis

Biography

Tsarouchis held his first exhibition at nineteen: in 1929 his works were shown at the Asylo Technis in Athens. In the same year he entered the Athens School of Fine Arts, where he studied until 1935.

He was born on 13 January 1910 in Piraeus, the second son of Athanasios Tsarouchis, a merchant from Arcadia, and Maria Monarchidi, whose family came from the island of Psara. For part of his childhood, from 1920 to 1925, he lived in the mansion of the Metaxas family, near his mother’s sister. In 1927 the family moved to Athens, but Piraeus remained the place that mattered most to him: both the respectable house where he grew up and the poor streets by the harbour where he ran off to as a boy. His interest in the theatre began early, and he worked as a director from 1928. At the School of Fine Arts his teachers were Iakovidis, Vikatos and Parthenis. At the same time, roughly in 1931–1934, he was a pupil of Photios Kontoglou, who introduced him to Byzantine icon painting. He also studied vernacular architecture and traditional Greek dress. Together with Dimitris Pikionis, Kontoglou and Angeliki Hatzimichali, he stood at the origins of a movement that sought to base Greek painting on the national tradition.

In 1935–1936 he visited Istanbul, then Paris and Italy. In the museums he saw Renaissance art and the Impressionists, discovered Theophilos Hatzimihail, and met Henri Matisse and Alberto Giacometti. Back in Greece in 1936, he held his first solo exhibition two years later, in the Alexopoulos shop on Nikis Street in Athens. The critics Papantoniou and Kapetanakis noted the distinct personality of the artist in it.

In 1940 he was called up and served in the engineers; by other accounts he took part in the fighting of the Greco-Italian War. During the Occupation he opened a private painting school. Several young people studied with him there for a short time and later became established artists: Kosmas Xenakis, Minos Argyrakis, Nikos Georgiadis and Rosita Sokou. In 1947 he held two exhibitions of watercolours and theatre sketches. In 1949, together with Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas, Yannis Moralis, Nikos Nikolaou, Nikos Engonopoulos and Panayiotis Tetsis, he founded the art group Armos. In 1950 he went to Paris again, and in 1951 he exhibited there and at the Redfern Gallery in London. In 1953 he signed a contract with the Iolas gallery in New York, in 1956 he was a candidate for the Guggenheim award, and in 1958 he took part in the Venice Biennale.

From 1967 he lived in Paris.

His main subjects were sailors, soldiers, nude men, customers of popular cafés and men dancing the zeibekiko. Admirers and critics have seen a homoerotic strand in these paintings, which is often linked with his place in queer art; in his public statements he avoided direct declarations on the matter. His painting combined Byzantine icon painting, the popular culture of Piraeus and lessons learned from Matisse. To my mind, the most accurate thing in these works is the attention to pose and clothing: an unbuttoned shirt, a uniform cap, a lowered gaze.

Theatre work went on alongside. He designed sets and costumes for the National Theatre, the Kotopouli theatre, the Municipal Theatre of Piraeus and other stages, mainly for plays. In 1954 he designed “Romeo and Juliet”, staged in the Royal Garden. In 1977 he directed Euripides’ “The Trojan Women” in his own modern Greek translation, doing both the direction and the design. He is credited with the habit of Greek cinema of showing a sailor, dancing or simply seated, in scenes set in popular taverns.

In 1982 the Yannis Tsarouchis Museum opened in Maroussi. It is housed in the artist’s own house, and he gave it his personal collection of his works. The Tsarouchis Foundation, which works to promote his legacy, operates as well. He was a member of the Visual Arts Chamber of Greece. Tsarouchis died in Athens on 20 July 1989.