Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika (1906-1994) Lot n° 20

* Nature morte avec samovar signé et daté ‘GHIKA 55' (en bas à droite) huile sur toile 142 x 117cm (55 7/8 x 46 1/16in). signed and dated (lower right) oil on canvas £100000-150000 Provenance Lady Nöel Evelyn ‘Peter' Norton collection, London. Thence by descent to the present owner. Exposé London, Leicester Galleries, Ghika: Recent Pictures, February 1955, no 33. Littérature Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika, Letters to Tiggy (1945-1955), Kastaniotis editions, Athens 1991, p. 237 (mentioned). Nikos Hadjikyriakos Ghika, Tegopoulos-Eleftherotypia editions,2009, p. 103 (illustrated). K.C. Valkana, Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika, His Painting Oeuvre, Benaki Museum, Athens 2011, no. 221, p. 288 (illustrated). A kaleidoscope of geometric shapes and lucid colours that glitter like golden Byzantine mosaics, this mesmerizing still life of silhouetted forms and rhythmic patterns speaks to us in an idiom of contentment and the joie de vivre. Angular shapes, twisted diagonals, tangled verticals, semicircles, polygons and polyhedra, as Patrick Leigh Fermor had put it, are held in mid-air like the stage properties of a conjuror that have miraculously halted and frozen in the middle of a juggling act.1 Bathed in light and caught in the clear air like flies in amber, pots, kettles, bottles and cups, in daring combinations and juxtapositions, animate the pictorial surface reflecting the artist's upbringing in an age-old tradition of dazzling light and pure colour. “I suppose that the colourist in me is the real Ghika, something that I derive from my Greek heritage, as opposed to all that I owe to Cubism and to the School of Paris.”2 This display of enthrallment with colour, along with the linear arrangement of objects, the symmetry and rhythm of the composition and the projection of all elements into a uniform and evenly illuminated plane where everything is clearly shown, are akin to the pictorial world of folk art and reminiscent of the powerful immediacy and disarming sincerity of Theofilos's paintings. Moreover, on a deeper level, this work also displays an intricate lacework of sophistication, reflecting Ghika's fascination with still life's capacity for transcending time and space constraints, as well as moving across different levels of reality and artifice. The angular treatment of the composition echoes the fragmented planes and spatial distortions cultivated by cubism3, while alluding to an enduring convention of Greek art through the ages. As the painter himself once noted, “the character of the Greek schema, whether in antiquity, the Byzantine era or folk art, is by and large geometric.”4 Here, everything is subordinate to the sovereign rule of geometry and architecture, recalling the artist's views of Hydra from the 1930s, in which he combined early cubist experiences with the archetypal volumes and geometric forms of his native island of Hydra. As a matter of fact, Ghika aptly alludes to this earlier period of his work by including on the upper right the same flower vase that features prominently in his 1939 masterpiece Hydra, Composition in black, sold by Bonhams, Greek Sale, November 25, 2014, lot 7. 1 P. Leigh Fermor, “the Background of Niko Ghika” in Ghika, Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture, C. Zervos, S. Spender, P.L. Fermor ed., Boston Book and Art Shop, Boston 1965, p. 33. As noted by still-life scholar Y. Kolokotronis, “Ghika revitalises the still life genre, delving deeper than any other artist into its relationship with the surrounding environment.” Y. Kolokotronis, Still Life in Modern Greek Art from the 19th Century to Date [in Greek], doctoral dissertation, Athens 1992, p. 103. 2 E. Roditi, “An Interview with Ghika”, Charioteer quarterly, vol. 1, no. 2, Autumn 1960, p. 56. 3 Paying tribute to the early 20th century cubist masters, Ghika included on the lower left a wood grain motif that features in many of Picasso's and Braque's still life paintings and collages from the 1910s. 4 N. Hadjikyriakos-Ghika, “On Greek Art” [in Greek], Neon Kratos journal, no. 5, January 1938.