Polyptych XII

Daniel Gounaridis was born in 1934 in Thessaloniki and studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts (1953-58) under the tutelage of Yannis Kefallinos and Yannis Moralis. He continued his studies in Paris (1960-64), at the École des Beaux-Arts, the École des Arts Décoratifs and the École Estienne. For a long period he taught at the Vakalo School. In the early 1960s he painted abstract compositions, organised in diptychs, triptychs and polyptychs, which are distinguished by their harmonious alternation of light and dark colours and their lyrical atmosphere. The next phase of his work, generally entitled "Windows" (1970), marks his turn to figuration and his long search for the attempt to express and render space. The compositions during the period of the dictatorship have a clear critical orientation with symbol images such as hands, flowers and barbed wire. The social and existential dimension of his work comes to the fore in themes such as "The City" (1973, 1975) and "Fantastic Landscapes" and "Dead Spasms" (1985, 1988, 1992). In "Polli" the suffocating repetition of the geometric volumes of the buildings combined with the precision of the description, the dominance of cold grey tones and the total absence of man offer images of metaphysical charge. The disturbance of ecological balance, flattening uniformity, alienation and the inhuman contemporary urban landscape are the conceptual axes of his work.