EMΣΤ is pleased to present a never-before-seen series of drawings by Greek modernist painter Eleni Pitari-Pangalou (1905–1995). With this presentation, the museum revisits the case of a female artist who, though active in her day, fell into obscurity after her demise, thus eluding the attention of a wider public longer-term.
Pitari-Pangalou was born in Istanbul in 1905 into a wealthy family of the Greek diaspora. Four years after relocating to Athens in1922, she enrolled in the Athens School of Fine Arts where she briefly worked at the side of the well-known Greek modernist painter Nikolaos Lytras (1883–1927). In 1929 she was accepted into the class of Constantinos Parthenis (1878–1967), also a celebrated painter in his day. From 1939 onwards, she actively participated in group shows organised by various collectives and associations, including Eleftheroi Kallitechnes (Free Artists, 1939); Omas Ellinon Zografon Characton (The Greek Painters and Printmakers Group, 1939); Omas Zografoi kai Glyptai (The Painters and Sculptors Group, 1954); and To Ergastiri (The Studio, 1965, 1969); as well as several editions of the Panhellenic Art Exhibition, then held at Zappeion (1939, 1952, 1957, 1960, 1963, 1967, 1969, 1975). In 1963, Pitari-Pangalou was among the artists who represented Greece in the 7th São Paulo Art Biennial and the 5th Alexandria Biennale for Mediterranean Countries. In 1950, she presented her first solo exhibition in Athens at Zachariou Gallery. Two further solo exhibitions were to follow, organised by the historic Nees Morfes Gallery (1959, 1963), and she also showed work at Medusa Art Gallery in Rome (1963).
The body of work she most known for consists mainly of oil paintings – landscapes, still lives, portraits and allegorical depictions. Inspired by the teachings of Parthenis, these are mostly attempts to use the language of abstract expressionism, then a dominant trend. However, during the 1960s and 1970s and alongside her more “formal” exhibited work, Pitari-Pangalou, by now well into middle age, created a body of uniquely original black-and-white drawings, using ink on paper, that have little in common with the rest of her oeuvre. These drawings navigate the realms of fantasy, clairvoyance and metaphysical concerns, where the legacy of Parthenis is activated in earnest, linking the experimental spirit of abstraction to the fundamental premises of symbolism. Through these drawings Pangalou appears to give shape to the theoretical principles that informed her painting over the years; perhaps even her own beliefs about the meaning of art in general. These intuitive, enigmatic, highly insightful drawings recall, for example, Edith Rimmington’s surrealist visions of organic decomposition, the unsettling forms that populate Catherine Yarrow’s prints or the dream-like autobiographical work of Leonora Carrington. Together, they serve to underscore the often overlooked yet crucial contribution of women artists to the surrealist movement.
In these drawings, Pangalou meticulously, even obsessively covers every inch of the paper’s white surface almost to the point of horror vacui, creating a central theme and then enclosing it in a cluster of forms that seem to multiply ad infinitum. Recalling a Blakean cast of characters, her emaciated, androgynous figures, part-human, part-demon or insect, appear to hover in space. Sometimes placed within geometrical frameworks (circles, triangles) or against Constructivist urbanscapes, or seemingly lost amidst anonymous crowds of people or animals, they almost always are seen facing a glowing source, presumably of light or energy, that serves as either a gravitational centre or, occasionally, a centrifugal force in the composition at large. Showing no interest in accurately depicting specific features and nonchalantly leaving out all references to topography and place, Pitari-Pangalou’s enigmatic drawings manage to transcend time as they probe the ephemerality that is the lot of humanity, the burden of loss, the tragic nature of memory and the transcendental quality of magic.
Secure in the knowledge that these drawings would not be exposed to judgement, the artist has expressed herself with absolute freedom, articulating her spiritual preoccupations, interpreting the world through the intimate lens of her own conscience and simultaneously reclaiming it, allowing viewers, sixty years later, to share a furtive glimpse.
EMΣT would especially like to thank Alessandra Maioletti, the artist’s niece, for generously permitting access to the painter’s work and archive.
Curator: Anna Mykoniati
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