Landscape with trees, 1924
Agenor Asteriadis studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts at the time when the mentality of the Munich School was dominant; he never left Greece to continue his artistic apprenticeship. His work is indissolubly bound up with tradition, and is at the same time avant-garde, as features of post-Impressionist painting, which he got to know indirectly from his colleagues, can be traced in it. In his painting he combined explorations of modern art with Byzantine and folk tradition, which he assimilated and projected without barren imitativeness, thus echoing the quests for 'Greekness' of the 'generation of the '30s'. His works are marked by the articulation of the space into planes, elimination of perspective, condensation of forms and daring with colour - with the result that these give the impression of a spontaneous and authentic world, such as that of children's art work.
In Landscape with Trees, he follows the paratactical method of composition, with towering trees in the foreground, some houses, and, in the background, mountains, arranged in successive zones, parallel with the surface of the picture. In this way, he departs from traditional perspective, as depth is defined by the gradation of the planes. This practice brings him close to Cézanne, as he builds up the composition with colour, which dominates not only as a structural element, but also by its anti-naturalistic rendering is at the same time an expression of a vital inner life.