Thanos TSINGOS (1914-1965) Cannes signé et date... Lot 44

Thanos TSINGOS (1914-1965) Cannes signé et date ‘TSINGOS 59' (en bas à droite); signé et daté ‘No 104/ TSINGOS/ 59' (au verso) huile sur toile 162 x 130cm (63 3/4 x 51 3/16in). Peint en 1959. signed and dated (lower right); signed and dated (on the reverse) oil on canvas £25000-42000 Provenance Galerie 65, Cannes. Private collection, Athens. Exposé Cannes, Galerie 65, Tsingos, 1959, no. 104. Athens, National Gallery/Alexandros Soutzos Museum, Thanos Tsingos, July 1980, no. 60 (listed, p. 36, and illustrated in the exhibition catalogue). Athens, National Gallery/A. Soutzos Museum, Reminiscences, Transformations, Quests, Ministry of Culture and Science/Athens Cultural Capital of europe, 1985 (illustrated in the exhibition catalogue, p. 93). In 1959, Tsingos reached the pinnacle of his success, reaping laurels in Cannes for his one-man show at Gallery 65. His paintings were sold in europe, the USA and Canada, while his London galleries consistently promoted his work.1 In Cannes, a brilliant picture included in this breakthrough show, sinewy calligraphic lines and abstractive shapes worked with thick impasto into a kind of sculptural form, are freely combined on a shimmering surface to evoke the meeting of sea and land and produce a highly personal interpretation of the cosmopolitan port in the South of France that recalls the leisurely pleasure found by Picasso at Antibes, Bonnard at Le Cannet, and Dufy in Nice. Bursting with intensity and verve, the painting showcases the artist's sensitivity for the materiality of paint and fascination with texture and colour (note the dazzling white and red highlights on a wonderful sea of green gleaming with an imaginative blend of hues including olive, mineral, forest, hunter, India, pine and midnight greens.) The immediacy of the execution, reminiscent of the surrealist automatic writing, shifts the centre of gravity from the production of images to the process of painting. The viewer's eye travels along the vigorous lines, following the movement of the painter's hand, his romantic gesture which reveals the liberation of confined energy. Starting in 1954, Tsingos used to spend spring and summer months in the Côte d'Azur, often working fervently on new projects that represent some of the most inspired formulations of art informel, europe's response to the high-rhetoric of America's abstract expressionism. 1 See Thanos Tsingos/Yannis Gaitis [in Greek], exhibition catalogue, Cyclades Gallery, Ermoupolis,2004.