Portrait of Evang. Averoff-Tossizzas
The rich opus of Paris Prekas includes sculpture, painting, print-making, and architecture. It represents a constant quest which fruitfully combined the present with the past, a fervency which prompted him to discover Greece, as he journeyed in its history or set down an impression of its every corner, every place of memory, every expression of its soul, which he depicted in a composite, highly personal artistic idiom. Using particularly water-colour in the rendering of landscape, which dematerialises and spiritualises the content by its translucency, he created pictures which were not confined to a mere topographical depiction, but served as an experiential contact of the artist with space. By constructivist-abstract aesthetic approaches and references to the simplicity and austerity of ancient Greek art, he combined in his painting history, myths, and traditions to produce compositions of a monumental character, sometimes with symbolic extrapolations.
The oil-painting Portrait of Evangelos Averoff-Tosizza is an attempt to portray the philosopher-politician and man of letters, giving emphasis to the rendering of the face, in an effort to capture his individual characteristics. The result may be a work of simplified painting, familiar from the artist's water-colours and the seascapes, but it succeeds in conveying by its physiognomy the wealth of the intellectual interests of the subject which fill his world, quite apart from politics. In any event, the pencil in his hand and the blank papers on his desk refer us precisely to this capacity of the politician, the author, and the writer.
