76 - GEORGE RORRIS (born 1963)

GEORGE RORRIS (born 1963) Nu pose dans l' atelier signé en grec et daté « 2001 » (en bas à droite) huile sur toile 106 x 146 cm (41.73 × 57.48 in.) oil on canvas Footnotes: Provenance Private collection. Literature M. Koutsomallis-Moreau, George Rorris, the Nobleness of Purity, exhibition catalogue, Basil & Elise Goulandris Foundation, Andros, 2001, p. 279 (shown in a photograph of the artist at work). In 2001, when the work was painted, Rorris received the Academy of Athens Award for Young Painters Under the Age of Forty. The same year he started painting almost exclusively female nudes, a subject he hadn't taken up since 1991. 'I paint solely from nature and always with live models. Why do I paint women? Well, because what interests me is alterity, the unknown world of that other who is called woman. It holds a great fascination for me because it is something I do not know, something that is a mystery to me. The women I paint I want them to be contemporary, although I'm persuaded that they strongly resemble women of the 1930s and this is without me having any particular knowledge of that generation. Anyway, I hope the way I portray them is contemporary.'1 Here, a young woman sleeps naked on a salmon-coloured loveseat in the centre of the picture, her thighs highlighted within an otherwise subdued composition. Behind her is a blank wall marked with drips of black paint and a dark panel next to a window with painted-over panes. A shabby couch on the right, upholstered in slate-blue cloth and laden with books and catalogues, completes the arrangement. Consequently, the painting becomes a portrait of not only the woman portrayed but also of the space surrounding her-reminiscent of Lucian Freud's intricate interiors. Yet, the beautiful central subject notwithstanding, the true star of the picture is the grey-brown floor. Its steeply receding wooden planks evoke the heavily textured fields of Anselm Kiefer, transforming the studio ground into a psychologically acute landscape. Prefacing the catalogue of the artist's 2004 exhibition at the Foundation for Hellenic Culture in New York, Athens National Gallery Director M. Lambraki-Plaka noted that Rorris's paintings 'reveal the passions of humanity through the passions of the pictorial matter. The viewer feels that they are actually entering the space where the artist works, that they even step on the timeworn paint-splashed floorboards. The colour, rich and at the same time delicate, moves subcutaneously towards the greys, to suddenly rise in controlled bright crescendo. The brushwork, sometimes gentle, in the shadow, sometimes dense, with profusion and intensity.'2 Poet Y. Kondos added a lyrical dimension: 'Rorris's enclosed rooms want or try to approach time but they lose their way. However, the colours find paths, tell stories, speak with silence. A young woman, perhaps a girl, is sleeping; the floor and walls are a jumble of colours. The window is obscured by a brown tone which blocks all communication with the outside world. On a deeper level, the subject of Rorris's painting is light. Light in all nuances of darkness and surprise.'3 1. M. Koutsomallis-Moreau, George Rorris, the Nobleness of Purity, exhibition catalogue, Basil & Elise Goulandris Foundation, Andros, 2001, p. 296. See also interview to M Kokkini [in Greek], Lifo magazine, November 10, 2019. 2, 3. Rorris, Painting 1996-2003, exhibition catalogue, Foundation for Hellenic Culture, New York, 2004, pp. 21, 23. This lot is subject to the following lot symbols: AR AR Marchandises soumises au droit de suite de l'artiste payable par l'acheteur. For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com