Panayiotis Tetsis

b. 1925

In his painting, Panayiotis Tetsis (1925) has always maintained constant links with the senses. His gaze was trained in reading the light and translating it into pure forces of colour. He created a painting en plein air that is truly colouristic, with powerful harmonies, which convincingly interpret the nature of Greek light. In his mature work, Panayiotis Tetsis literally builds with colour. He translates light and shadow into calculated units of pure and gleaming colour, constructing a sunny and light universe. A neglected quality in the approach of modern painting to colour, the light provides the basis for the artist to lay out colour in his works. Yet, in his painting, Tetsis did not ignore the contributions of Abstraction. Each section of his painting can be read as pure painting and as part of the enigma of the image. As a thinker of the gaze, Panayiotis Tetsis seeks the absolute. He guides the viewer’s gaze toward the inner motions of the soul. This is why he only paints what he is intimately familiar with: his friends, landscapes from the island of Hydra or Sifnos, the last rays of the sun, the Friday open-air market on Xenokratous Street, in Athens, and still-life paintings, depicting objects with which the artist maintains a constant tactile and visual relationship.