Reference to the Work of Periklis Pantazis 'Man's Head', 1996

After his apprenticeship at the School of Fine Arts, with Yannis Moralis, Makis Theophylaktopoulos lived from 1969 to 1974 successively in Lausanne, Paris, and New York. His subject is, literally, the human figure and its vicissitudes on the painted surface, in relation to design, colour, material, background. He himself believes that the first influences upon him came from Yannis Tsarouchis and the young Bouzianis, while in practice he has attempted to paint a human being in his own way. From the beginning it was clear that he was looking for a method of painting to render his ideas and intentions. From as early as 1966 - 1967 he was exhibiting works with motorbike-riders as their theme at the Astor Art Gallery. His first bikers were traffic police, police who impress by the exercise of power interwoven with speed. Later, the biker is a portrait of himself.
Theophylaktopoulos is a sensuous painter who admits that he wishes to convey an emotion of his own by depicting his life. His human figure from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s followed a course of consistent and systematic research. Sometimes, together with the depiction of the figure, an attempt at delimitation of the space, by a simple line with square or parallelogram patterns, is observable. At other times, we see in his works simple, minimalist figures, with a monochrome composition and shades of biege, grey, blue, gentle lilac, and other colours. At other times again, the figures seem erased, incorporated into the background, with a rendering of their mobility, while at yet other times they are shown by a simple strong outline, which serves in the end as the delineation of their existence.