YANNIS TSAROUCHIS: DANCING IN REAL LIFE EXHIBITION GUIDE SPRING/SUMMER 2021 1 FOURTH FLOOR HEALTH AND SAFETY AT WRIGHTWOOD 659 THIRD FLOOR The health and safety of our visitors and staff is our priority. In an effort to reduce the risk of spread of COVID-19, we have adopted the following measures based on CDC, state, and city guidelines: • Improved air filtration in the building SECOND FLOOR • Hand sanitizing stations on each floor • Thorough cleaning of high-touch surfaces throughout the day • Reduced gallery occupancy with timed entry • Required mask-wearing while in the gallery FIRST FLOOR GALLERY ENTRANCE We are counting on your cooperation to keep the gallery safe and open. OFFICES (GALLERY STAFF ONLY) In order to ensure the safety and well-being of staff and fellow guests, we ask that visitors: • Read and follow signage carefully • Wear a mask and use the hand sanitizer provided in the gallery EXHIBITION BY THEME LEGEND PROPER PLACEMENT: THE FOLLOWING ARE NOT ACCEPTABLE: Rise in the East, Set in the West RESTROOM Disquieting Muses WATER FOUNTAIN Some Butterflies and Lovely White Flowers Olympians Dancing in Real Life ELEVATOR • Maintain a distance of at least 6 feet to other visitors or groups Dionysiac Visions • Use the stairs when possible, or limit the elevator to two people Allegory and Self COAT/BAG ROOM • Stay home if experiencing symptoms related to COVID-19 BHUTAN: A Photographic Essay CATALOG PICK-UP For further information and specific details on how we are playing it safe, COVER: Yannis Tsarouchis. Figures for Zeimbekiko dance. 1970s, Pen on paper. © Yannis Tsarouchis Foundation visit wrightwood659.org. 1 2 Wrightwood 659 is honored to host Yannis Tsarouchis: Dancing in Real military servicemen and extracted Life, featuring one of the most beloved Greek painters of the 20th century. beauty from their coarseness. The Jointly curated by Androniki Gripari, Chair of the Yannis Tsarouchis duality of Tsarouchis’s work ties the Foundation in Athens, and Adam Szymczyk, former Artistic Director of East to the West, the working class Documenta 14. With over 200 original pieces, this long overdue exhibition is to the bourgeois, and the common the first comprehensive survey of Tsarouchis’s work beyond Greek borders. to the divine. Tsarouchis (1910-89) used painting to radically interrogate Greek We are thrilled to connect a new nationalism, substantiating his work with centuries of cultural knowledge audience to this profound and from the Greco-Roman world through the fall of the military Junta (1967-74) complicated artist. As you explore and the establishment of the Third Hellenic Republic. He coded tradition in the exhibition, we encourage you the new language of modernism, connecting the work of Matisse to shadow to admire Tsarouchis’s imagery puppet theater. As a leading voice from the Thirties Generation, Tsarouchis and look deeply into the allegory EXHIBITION teetered between a Western celebration of classical antiquity and the of his work. CATALOG Eastern traditions originating in the Byzantine Empire. His multifaceted Yannis Tsarouchis: Dancing work collaged narrative and style from disparate periods to define his own – Brad White in Real Life is accompanied inclusive vision of Greekness. COO, Wrightwood 659 by a comprehensive, richly illustrated volume of the Drawing from an interdisciplinary canon, he interpreted the writing of poet same name. Published by Constantine P. Cavafy, and designed the theatrical sets and costumes for Sternberg Press, Berlin, Maria Callas. The title, Dancing in Real Life reflects on Tsarouchis’s interest it will be available for in dance forms and how they connect to daily experience, including the zeimbekiko, a solo dance from Asia Minor previously performed exclusively by The exhibition Yannis Tsarouchis: Dancing in purchase at Wrightwood Real Life is organized by the Yannis Tsarouchis 659 during your visit. men, and uses this form as an entry point into his gaze upon the male body. Foundation, Athens. Support for the exhibition is Taking a considerable risk in the era that revered uniform, Tsarouchis portrayed provided by Alphawood Foundation Chicago. 3 4 TIMELINE LIFE HISTORY LIFE HISTORY Born in Piraeus. 1910 1933 The 4th CIAM (International Congress of Modern Architecture) in Athens. 1913 King George I assassinated in Thessaloniki. The Balkan Wars end Produces drawings and paintings 1934 Many regions were incorporated in the inspired by his exposure to avant garde Kingdom of Greece which doubled its art and writes surrealist poems that will size and population. remain unpublished until 1980. He will return to an experimental Ballet libretto 1914 Start of World War I. he wrote in that period only in 1971, in a series of drawings of set and costume 1922 Asia Minor Catastrophe. Over one designs for Ballet A and Ballet B. million refugees arrive in Greece, bringing radical change. The Monarchy is abolished the following year. Visits Paris for the first time to explore the 1935 Failed military coup and restoration work of modernist European artists and of the monarchy in Greece. Meets the choreographer, 1926 meets Matisse. Eva Palmer-Sikelianos. Paints the series Cyclists, inspired by 1936 Dictatorship under Ioannis Metaxas cycling events in France. Back in Greece, with the support of King George II. Meets Sotiris Spatharis, master of 1927 First Delphic Festival organized he connects the colors used by Spatharis shadow puppet theater. by Eva Palmer-Sikelianos and poet and Dedousaros in Karagiozis posters, Angelos Sikelianos ushers in a revival to Matisse. of classical theater. Expands his interest in theater designing 1937 Studies at the Athens School of Fine Arts 1928 sets and costumes with the Kotopouli and begins his first professional work theater company. for the theatre: Maurice Maeterlinck’s Princess Maleine, directed by Fotos First solo exhibition in Athens includes 1938 Politis for the Drama School of the early paintings and work from his National Theatre. stage designs. Studies Byzantine painting while 1930 After copying the Head of Medusa from 1939 Start of World War II. assisting Fotis Kontoglou. the Archeological Museum of Piraeus, he starts to paint from life. Learns to weave on the loom from Eva 1931 Drafted into WWII on the Albanian front. 1940 Greece enters World War II. Palmer-Sikelianos, learns Byzantine He continues to paint. musical notation and copies Fayum Portraits. 1941 Germany occupies Greece. Studies under Constantinos Parthenis 1932 Paints The Arrest of Three Communists 1944 Liberation of Athens and beginning of at Athens School of Fine Arts. during the first days of the Dekemvriana the bloody Dekemvriana (December conflict. Conflict) in Athens. 5 6 LIFE HISTORY LIFE HISTORY 1946 Start of the Greek Civil War. His French translation of Euripides’ The 1969 George Seferis publicly condemns Bacchae is performed at the Avignon the dictatorship. Co-founds the Armos group with painters 1949 End of the Greek Civil War. Festival, directed by Jean - Louis Thamin. from the Thirties Generation with Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika, Yannis Moralis, 1971 Death of George Seferis turns into a Nikos Engonopoulos, Nikos Nikolaou. demonstration against the dictatorship. After solo exhibitions in Paris and 1951 London, he begins to receive Frequently returns to Greece after the 1974 Fall of the Junta. international acclaim. fall of the Junta. The following year he produces a large body of work on the zeimbekiko dance. The Il Gabbiano In an exhibition with the Armos group, 1952 gallery organizes his solo exhibition his work Seated Sailor and Reclining in Rome. Nude offends the Greek military and is removed. Mounts a production of The Trojan 1977 Women by Euripides, translated, One of three Greek artists nominated 1957 directed, and designed by himself in for the Guggenheim Prize. an Athens parking lot. Moves back to Greece. He participates in the Venice Biennale 1958 Police measures are enacted against and designs the sets and costumes for the Greek ‘Teddy Boys’ for provocative Establishes the Yannis Tsarouchis 1981 Luigi Cherubini’s Medea at the Dallas and offensive behavior. Foundation and donates his house in Civic Opera, Texas, Directed by Alexis Marousi along with many of his works. Minotis. The play features Maria Callas His foundation hosts its first exhibition and they become friends. He shifts his the following year. He exhibits at the focus to theater production. Archeological Museum of Thessaloniki, the only major survey of his work in a Collaborates with Theatro Technis 1959 Greek museum during his lifetime. and designs the sets and costumes for Aristophanes’ The Birds performed Exhibition of his works titled Zeimbekika at the Herod Atticus Theatre in Athens. at the Zoumboulakis Galleries. He The production provokes strong mounts, directs, translates, and designs protests. The remaining performances sets and costumes for Seven against are canceled. Thebes by Aeschylus, in Thebes, in a field specially transformed for the Starts painting again. Solo exhibition 1961 performance. at Zoumboulakis Galleries. Continues to paint despite being 1984 The Birds is performed at the Sarah 1962 afflicted with Parkinson’s disease. Bernhard Theatre in Paris. It is awarded a He moves back to Greece. prize by the Theatre of Nations Festival. The first four collections of Tsarouchis’s 1986 texts are published by Kastaniotis 1963 First Pacifist Rally from Marathon to Editions. Athens is banned by the police. A leftwing MP Grigoris Lambrakis is the Dies in Athens. 1989 only participant marching all the way. He is assassinated by far-right extremists in Thessaloniki after delivering a speech at a rally against Vietnam war later that year. His funeral turns into mass IMAGE, PREVIOUS PAGE: Yannis Tsarouchis, Dancing demonstration against the rightwing in Real Life and in Theatre, 1963-1968, oil on canvas. government. © Yannis Tsarouchis Foundation TIMELINE: is based on/is an edited version of the In self-exile, Tsarouchis moves to Paris 1967 Military coup—many Greek artists and timeline included in the Yannis Tsarouchis 1910–1989, with all his work.