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George Prokopiou | Biography

The Greek Painter George Prokopiou was born at Bournova, a suburb οf Smyrna in Asia Minor, in 1876, and died in Albania during the Greek war against the Axis powers οn December 20, 1940.

He studied painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts (1895-1901) under Nikiforos Litras and George Roilos. In 1904, he entered a competition held by the Court οf Addis Ababa for the execution οf a portrait οf the Emperor Menelik 2nd and the Empress Taitou, from life. He became Painter at the Court οf the Emperor, 1904-1905.

He joined in the Asia Minor campaign οf the Greek army (1919-1922) and took moving pictures οf the battles there οn film. He painted portraits οf officers at the front, e.g. οf the British General G.T.M. Bridges, οf Colonel Ν. Plastiras, of Colonel George Kondilis and others, as well as a series οf action scenes, which were exhibited in 1923 at the National Technical University οf Athens.

Οf these paintings, the National Bank οf Greece has in its collection two works entitled "Το the Very Last" and" "Letter from an Evzone"; the Army Officers Cadets School has "The Evzone Attacks" (1921), and the Athens Military Club has "The Canon Going into Battle" (1925).

He took υρ residence in Athens in 1922 and began tο paint landscapes, still lifes, and series οf nude studies. The picture gallery οf the Athens Town Hall contains two οf his later landscape paintings: "The Cactus" (1938) and "Royal! Park" (1939). His last painting ''Aryirocastro'' (1940) remained unfinished because οί his death from hardships suffered οn the Albanian front. He was buried in Athens, with military honours.

He was honoured with the following awards:

1: Grand Cross of the Order of Solomon
2: Superior Commander of the Imperial Order of the Star of Ethiopia (1905)
3: Silver medal of the Abyssinian Lion; the Greek Military Cross (1920)
4: The Greek Medal οf Military Valour (1924)
5: The knights golden cross of the Royal Order of the Saviour and the Inter-allied Medal (1924)

A realist in his portraiture, a romantic in his military and rustic compositions, he appeared as an impressionist in his outdoor studies, concerned mainly with depicting the light οf Attica. Ηe exhibited his works at one-man exhibitions in the Imperial palace of Adis–Ababa in 1905, in Alexandria and Smyrna in 1907-1910, in Athens ίη 1923 and 1928, and in group exhibitions held in Athens in 1936, 1937, 1938 and 1939.

On the 25th anniversary οf his death, a commemorative exhibition οf his works was held at the "New Forms" Gallery ίη Athens (20 May-20 June 1966) and, in that con¬nection, an illustrated brochure was published, dedicated to his life and his work, wlth an introduction written by his son, [dr-angelo-prokopiou.html Dr. Angelos G. Prokopiou], Professor of History οf Art in the Faculty of Architecture at the National Technical University of Athens.

the Painter's Work

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  George Prokopiou the Painter in egypt 1907
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  George Prokopiou the-Painter Athens 1924
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  George Prokopiou Athens 1937
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  George Prokopiou the Painter Emperor Menelik

The works included in this edition, gίve an idea of the artist's creative maturity, stretching over α period of 40 years from 1900 tο 1940. Much of his work is not included here, either for reasons of the limited space, or because it has ποt yet been made ρossible to gather the large number of his paintings, which are scattered ίπ palaces, museums and homes in Εgypt, Ethiopia, Αsία Minor, Greece, Italy and in various collections, such as the Royal Collection in England, etc.

George Prokopiou | the Man

The artistic activities of George Prokopiou were nοt confined tο painting only. They extended also tο the cinema. Ηe was οne of the first war photographers. Τhe 56,000 feet of film he shot of the military and political history of Hellenism from 1919 tο 1926 - especially during the Αsia Minor campaign and the disaster suffered there by the Greeks - testify to the gifts of a director, who approached filmmaking with the visiοn of a painter.

Τhe series of war pictures which he has painted took shape in his mind in the course of his daily activities as a war photographer οn the field of battle. George Prokopiou's particiρatiοn in the natiοnal events of his time, and the final sacrifice of his life in the Αlbanian front in 1940, was recognised by the many honours he was awarded by Greek governments both before and after his death. Νοw, with this edition, the public has been provided with an opportunity tο remember once more and re-assess the plastic virtues of his pure form of ρainting in the light οf the aesthetic criteria of our time.

Τhe outstanding virtue of George Prokopiou as a painter was his active contact with reality. The portrait of the Emperor Menelik of Ethiopia [Abyssinia], executed in charcoal at the Palace of Addis Ababa in 1904, is the first revelation of his realistic approach. Far removed from the influences of the neo-classical and romantic tradition of Athens at the end of the 19th century, which had been cultivated by the masters of Vienna and Munich such as Rahl, Hess and Ν. Gizis, the young painter George Prokopiou saw, in Abyssinia, human types of a different race, Africans. These had nο relation tο the archetypes of Greek and Roman antiquity, the idealised forms of which dominated and fettered Greek sculpture and ρainting up tο the beginnings of this century. His liberation from the bonds of that aesthetic heritage was achieved in the field of portraiture, where the artist concentrated οn the individual character of the human physiognomy and struggled tο capture the psychological expression, tο compel it tο submit tο the direct observation of the artist. Sometimes with fleeting glimpses of the model's psychology (General Bridges, 1921), and sometimes with ρersistent and detailed effort tο achieve a perfection of the modelling (Colonel Plastiras, 1921), Prokopiou led Greek ρainting towards a revival of the art of portraiture.

His active contact with reality, was developed in a context of a more violent form of existence, in his compositions from the Αsia Μinοr wars, with their multiplicity of human figures. Ιn these works human personality loses its individual rhythm and is made to exist in terms of mass rhythms, of men engaged in warfare and battle. The painter's realism is concentrated οn the reproduction of the movement of guns and cannons, and is aimed to capturing as in an instantaneous snapshot, the innumerable dramatic poses of soldiers engaged in killing and being killed. Τhe depiction of the soldier, roused for victory or fallen in defeat, was nοt affected by any horror at the idea of death. Τhe Great Idea [the dream that Greece would οne day regain its territories of her glorious Βyzantine past] which inspired the generation of Prokopiou, the generation of 1912 - 1922, lent his war paintings a mythical kind of exaltation, which elevated the soldiers intο heroes, fighting for the fulfilment of the dreams of Hellenism in the eastern Aegean. In this way, his realism was transformed in his war paintings intο idealism of mass exaltation and Procoρiοu became the rhapsodist of a new Iliad, written beneath the fortresses of Troy.

His name was known from his travels to Abyssinia, from the powerful chiaroscuros he had brought tο Alexandria from the kingdoms of Menelik. Τhe front-line officers used tο invite him to their tents tο listen tο his tales of real and imaginary adventures, in lands and among peoples they had read about in the books οf Sinbad the Sailor. And so, this highly imaginative artist, who sported with danger and in whose blood run the constant urge for battle and the tempestuous verve of existence, loaded himself up with a movie camera, a box of paints, and a pile of paper, and began roamming among the trenches of the Asla Μinor campaign, to immortalise the scenes of battle as they were being fought. Οn οne occasion prime-minister Kondillis, then a Colonel οn the Sardes front, was oblidged to constrain hlm forcibly after he had delliberately provoked a surprise attack οn the enemy in order to engineer some activity in the dormant front.

It was at such moments of exaltation and enthusiasm that general Ν. Plastiras also made his acqaintance at the battles of Aktsal-Dag, at Seydi-Gazi and Eski-Sehir and wrote: "...ranging up and down the advanced fire-posts, closest to the enemy lines, he often exposed himself to a hail of exploding shells and a rain of bullets, in order to record fleeting episodes of heroism, which may be handed down to eternity, by means only of a paintbrush, wielded by an artist who was daring and fearless, as he was skillful... "(Eski-Sehir, 10 July 1921, Νic. Plastiras)

George Prokopiou exhibited his films and his paintings at a moment which was critical for the Greek nation: the retreat of 1922, the Asia Μinor disaster, the migration of waves of refugees from the East, the revolution. The artlst himself was missing. Both he and his family had been taken prisoners by the Turks. The Turkish Court Martial in Smyrna condemned him to death in 1922. Α sudden movement, of which only he knew the secret, took him clear of his guards οne night. Together with his family and his treasures of films and paintings, he boarded a French boat and presented himself to Colonel N. Plastiras who was then the leader of the 1922 revolution. It was then that Costas Athanatos wrote in his newspaper an article entitled "Noah and the Ark" and George Fteris hailed the survival of Prokopiou from the columns of "The Free Press". They had both made his acquaintance at the front and had joined with him in a bond of brotherhood in arms.

The painter now presented his work in the halls of the National Technical University. Το those oppressed with the sense of the defeat of Hellenism, a ρeορle wounded deeply in its spirit by the loss of the Great Idea, the war compositions of George Prokopiou were like a trumpet soundlng the resurrection. It was not so much an exhibition of painting as the very voice of those who had fallen in the places where Ηellenism had its history, in Ιοnia and Αeοlia; a voice which emerged from there to preserve those who still lived, from the downward path of defeat, to revive their flagging faith in the future. The leading actors in the war comροsitiοns of Prokopiou were ordinary anonymous soldiers, warriors imbued wlth determination, untouched by fear, sons of a collective consciousness, which continued the Trοjan War, after Odysseus had returned to Ithaca. Ιn an atmosphere of grey mist, the soldiers of Prokopiou fought and died as men worthy of that fate. Ηe was the last poet of the Great Ιdea.

From 1923 to 1928 the artist lived with the emotions of his memories. He continued to paint war scenes in that atmosphere of mythical grey. He painted now in his studio at 12 Nikiforou Theotoki street, in Athens. And he transferred also to his canvasses the landscapes he saw in Attica, bathed in the gentle light ofΙ his lyrical palette, which transformed trees, rocks and seashores into the stuff dreams are made of.

His contact with the outdoors of Attica, especially with the forest of Ardettus, caused a radical change in the painting of Ρrocopiou. Τhe mythical light of his war paintings was transformed in his landscapes into a sunlit harmony, the grey giving way to the hues of green. The realist still preserved-from his past- the element of precise and accurate design, but the romanticism of the warrior gave way to the questing concern for colour problems which is the mark of impressionism. The cactuses of Ardettus hill represent this period of his changing art. His painting took οn a new lease of life, through his sensitivity to atmospheric colour tones, and the painter trained in the hard school of war, the man who had always deliberately sought out danger, now showed an unusual tenderness for the silent things of the inner self, for flowers, for fruits, for the nude body, revealing the richly contrasting facets of his nature.

Prokopiou showed that he possessed the same passion lor life in both war and peace. It was with this same passion that he fell at last, his palette and brush in hand, while painting a picture of Girocaster, οn the 20th of December 1940. He fell victim of his impassioned spirit at a time when the Greek nation fought in Albania to repel the invasion of the Axis powers.

The memorial edition of the painter George Prokopiou gives us an insight, with a display of representative pictures, into the three stages through which his art passed from 1900 to 1940: realism, romanticism, impressionism. But, over and above the subject matter and the forms of his painting, this edition reveals to us a dynamic teacher of contemporary Greek painting, a painter who struggled incessantly to stretch his talents to the utmost limits in his effort to conquer expression, movement and light - that is, the most fleeting and challenging aspects of the painting of his time.

Prof. Dr. Angelo G. Prokopiou

Dpt. of History of Art, School of Architecture
National Technical University of Athens