The Abstract Chrom,odynamic Landscapes of Theodore Antoniades

     We cannot know what artistic trajectory would have been described by Theodore Antoniades had his life and development not been abruptly cut off at an early age. The sketches, paintings and the few notes which he left, however, reveal his serious artistic idiom, his frank approach and his competence and control of both ideas and medium. Finally, the artist's radicalism vis-('f-vis established positions and values is expressed in his work through a creative, revisionary intervention.

     The pencil and charcoal sketches done when Theodore Antoniades was an art student bear witnes to the supple and dialectic evolution of forms from volume. Initially he organized his space through a division and distribution of morphological units, with the resulting composition giving rise to separate chiaroscuro breakdowns. His first subjects were representational (male and/or female figures, nudes), arranged in accordance with the direction and intensity of the light, which in turn determined the range of depth and surface, as well as the realistic or formalistic manner in which they were executed. The artist's intention was not mere depiction but rather an interpretative approach to the theme which would correspond to his fine sense of perception, while imparting the specific feeling of the surrounding atmosphere and space.

     Antoniades' brush-strokes in these sketches are rough, spare and dynamic, presenting the essentially descriptive elements which mark the narrative aspect of the whole, stripped of detail. In certain of these sketc.hes, tendencies which were to follow are clearly discernible: plasticity, relief-like projection of surfaces and a sequential arrangement with forceful strokes, independent at certain points, points which are rendered schematically and, chiefly, rhythmically. It would thus be mistaken to consider those elements to be decorative, as they refer not to the surface per se but to the interplay of surfaces in the building of planes in abstract, geometric terms (a helix, for example).
     The paintings which followed lean increasingly towards the abstract, a tendency expressed mainly in a breaking down and reassembling of surfaces, with a redistribution of planes in the space which they define. For it was in this direction that Antoniades addressed his artistic seekings, bringing to them knowledge, cultivation and an ,experienced eye acquired through specialized studies and travel.
     Theodore Antoniades was a scholar of Byzantine art - a style he worked in for some time - as well as of western schools of painting. But he soon realized the limitations and confining conventionalism of the pseudoeasthetic perspective of the latter, which was based purely on visual stimuli. This he attempted to undermine by shifting the relationship between fore- and background, thus transforming his idiom into representation. The wellspring for this lay in the teachings of Byzantine art, with its inverted or mixed perspective through which the ontological presence of objects is stressed in a timeless, spatial framework.
     Antoniades' surfaces act as fields on which dynamic forces are exerted, giving rise to organic, vitalistic forms. These incorporate elements selectively borrowed from Analytical Cubism, the Postimpressionist vocabulary and Expressionism. At the same time, interest in the juxtaposition of multiple focal points of light is manifest.

     Having studied gemology, the artist was stimulated and inspired by the sparkling reflections of light in precious and semi-precious stones, in the superimposed planes of their crystalline structure. He was also interested in the plastic discourse between colour and shape as well as their inner associations, which are subject to the functional necessities of composition. Variations in the texture as related to the medium likewise attracted his attention, in conjunction with the interplay of masses in a space that is at once imposing, unchartable and polyphonic.
     An in-depth view of Antoniades' works discloses a volatile, revealing undercurrent, restrained but dynamic, which simultaneously links and differentiates the masses and surrounding space. The artist at the same time submits chromatic intensity and refulgence through a unique texture which is in turn subjected to internalized refractions of generative light, a light in which forms emerge and vanish, as in lush vegetation.

     In the artist's more recent works, a closer association with the principles of composition and progress leading to a transcendance of earlier stages can be perceived. Colour, medium, form and dimension merge, corresponding to the spontaneity of his action painting. The axes of symmetry have been shattered and replaced by an intense counterpoint of balance and harmony which brings forth rhythmic motifs.

     Separate units interact more decisively, building the tension in a vibrant space. The chromatic range comprises variations in tonal intensity and unexpected alternations which recall the paradoxical beauty of African art, with energized shapes in whose lines a thick fibre of image and vivid colour is manifest, as in the abundance resulting from the "fear of the void" (horror vacui).
     The very impact of paint on canvas breaks through to express its power in the morphological code of each composition, as all parameters function in the foreground with a commanding originality and immediacy. Although these works testify to the creative act that brought them forth, they are not in any sense of the word static. Antoniades' sharp edges trigger a fresh visual mobility, due not only to the dialectic accommodation of smaller or larger scales and to the spinning retraction of the centres of balance of the works but also to the centrifugal configurations and the underlying disturbance in the arrangement of forms born of a mysterious, subversive light. Surface rhythms correspond to those in the background and to the clean, sharply honed shapes which describe remarkable intensities of colour, colour which does not merely convey feeling but which defines positions and relationships on a map of introspective observation of inner states.
     For the colour on these canvases of Antoniades is a fraction in which the numerator is the powerful spectrum of tone and texture and the denominator the dynamics of contrast in form and colour, according to the orientation and space occupied in these fields pulsating with consecutive vibrations.
     This is not, then, a series of facile works whose abstract expressive paths seek to translate feeling or to enhance an outer adaptation of chromatic harmonies, and even less is. it a paean to idealized beauty designed to impress. It is, rather, a creative whole - executed, it is true, in a relatively short period of time - in which objectives are fully vindiacated.
     The aim of the expressive capacity and range of Antoniades was always self-sufficiency of morphological function in conjunction with a new type of interaction between viewer and work, in which the former is initiated from one stage to the next. Form and content, material substance and structural arrangement, chromatic design and space are wed in his compositions through a continual process. His choices were clear and well-oriented. From converted geometric abstraction, Cubist evolution, Expressionist manipulation and Fauvist colour to Constructivist conception, everything functions within an organic, rhythmic framework which is both personal and specific.

     In summing up the expressive and morphological phases through which the artist passed, I would note that
a) he initially conceived his forms and rendered them plane by plane, depending on the plasticity of their volume and the degrees of chiaroscuro,
b) he subsequently eliminated details and composed his individual form units geometrically and dynamically,
c) he treated these units with brilliant post - Impressionist and later with Fauvist colours, rendered with spon-taneous Expression ist brushstrokes,
d) he abolished the conventions of pseudoaesthetic perspective, replacing them with inverted or mixed Byzantine-Iike perspective presented in the foreground,
e) ) he borrowed elements from the language of Analytical Cubism and Constructivism in order to contract and lend substance to the structure of his abstract shapes,
f) the axes of symmetry are disrupted and revolve, significantly activating the fields
g) his colours, finally, become volatile and his dynamic intensities impose their hard-edged shapes. The entire composition acquires a rythmic quality with a fusion of all elements, which, however, still maintain their individual autonomy in a whole which is paradoxically harmonious, clear, bright, direct and possessed of textural and tonal variation.

     On the basis of the compositions left by Theodore Antoniades, it can be surmised that had he lived he would have further elaborated these creative seekings, as revealed by the quality of his works. His untimely death has unfortunately deprived us of a particularly talented artist. The works which we do have, however, vindicate his efforts and secure his place amongst the most interesting painters of his generation, a generation working in the eye of the storm, in this most contradictory of times.