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Demosthenis Kokkinides

Looking back in retrospect into the long-lasting route of Demosthenis

Kokkinides, one would realize, that it is adnate with life itself, its experiences
and its actions, with social reality, with the place. Respectively adnate with
personal realization of the place and its history, as well as the historical
awakening of happenings of major importance. As a memory recorder, with a
sharpness of a beholder, he may signal with his works upon realities optically
accessed, having as dominant element ordinary figures of his social round
about, or others well-known with social status, framed with determinant
symbols, speckles out of scale, which nevertheless constitute his artistic
language as a conceptual framework !

In his period-related units from 1958 to 2000, Kokkinides would

systematically retrospect matters pertaining to Greek structure in two ways,
topographical and social-political, depicting aesthetically in multidimensional
ways, their narrative character.

In his “First Works” of the 1958 – 1960 period, human silhouettes

– diversely given – prevail. His study about “The Art of painting in post –
Byzantine era” as well as “The folk - mannered of Theophilos’ ”, during his stay
in Lesvos island and his two month sojourn in Mount Athos would affect him
morphologically and chromatically.

The port of Piraeus, with its refugees’ districts, and the scenery of
the Cyclades Islands in the Aegean sea, would become his painting
orientation from 1960 to 1964 in the unit “Districts – Cyclades islands”;
Congruent with each region the chromatic choice applied. From the most
representing to the most abstractive works of this period, Kokkinides would
emphasize in typological directions, placing instantly lonely - mainly female –
silhouettes, in front of ordinary buildings.

The presage of the political developments in Greece with the

assassination of Gregorios Lamprakis and the war in Vietnam, provided the
handle for the unit of “War – Violence” from 1964 to 1967. Kokkinides would
declare the tragic factor of his themes mostly suggestive, with veneer in his
titles, assigning meaning unto them - with references to the Classics and the
Bezant – both comprising Greek civilization.

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Demosthenis Kokkinides

His intention to criticize, becomes more intense during the biennium

1967 – 1968 with the group of works “Recall of the malignant”. His references
to the seven-year lasting dictatorship, with the arrests, the trials and the
bans, will be alternated by clear representations, ablative and abstractive
enunciations, capable of defining facts, victims and state of affairs.

In continuation with the former unit, the “Identities” from 1968 to

1974, would include victims of the seven-year lasting dictatorship, well-known
or anonymous, usually male, whereas to the female presence he would rather
give consolation roles, as well as of patience and companionship. With
Vertical and horizontal lines in geometrical designs and monochrome
backgrounds he might empackage his silhouettes, as symbols of a negative,
concerning human liberties, period.

However, the birth of his daughter Catherina in 1967, was the handle
for the series of works in the unit “Maternities”. He hereby interweaves
tenderness of mother and child, in absence of the father, in reference to the
dominant political conditions, discretely assigning a semantic role to elements
like i.e. “The dark lamp”, to indirectly underline the ongoing conditions.

In the 1974 unit “Protests”, that would last until 1981, he turns to
syntheses where, monochrome backgrounds, figures, microphones, banners,
television sets, will become implying patterns of abstraction, recognizable in
their majority albeit containing contention symbolizations of any kind of
liberty.

During the period 1981 – 1987 in the unit “Seas”, Kokkinides is

turning to the natural environment, elevating marine space, as the utter
public benefit, with various interpretations. The apposition of figures that
are tasting and gazing at it, will create archetypal, arched, clustered designs,
viscous in their enunciation, commensurable of the perpetual, almost
aesthetic, flowing of water.

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Demosthenis Kokkinides

With a philosophical mood, as a researcher of human coexistence, of

nature and any kind of creation, he may, from 1987 to 1992, turn to themes
with the title “Mythological associations”. Within bordered, monochrome
backgrounds he would base, with a minimalistic intention, on specific points,
in silhouettes, plants and animals, posing fundamental, cosmogonic matters,
through a journey of day-dreaming.

On the same artistic coherence he may betake himself to the unit

with the title “Tribulation of transcendence” from 1992 to 2000. Figures,
elements of nature and human creation, assign meaning with either their
magnanimous or their minimalistic presence, repeatedly occurring in
monochrome surfaces, posing the dilemma of their temporary terrestrial
duration contrary to the universal happenings, the ecumenical values that
coact life’s rules.

An artist of the intellect and of deep thinking Kokkinides has

achieved to coalesce all over the cycles of his work, the fragile of everything
personal with the robust of everything official; to suggest by means of
symbols, colors and shapes, timeless concepts, balanced or contradictory, that
finally comprise the very essence of this world.

Μετάφραση : Κυράκης Β. Κωνσταντίνος