Olansa Cuttings

In keeping with the ‘post it late’ ethos, here’s mention of an early January visit to the National Art Gallery in Athens.

I had little idea what to expect. From the outside the whole place seemed rather aggressive: warplanes, tanks and whatnot. Turned out it was the wrong place. The gallery was further along the street.

The gallery’s exhibits break down into domestic and some foreign pieces, and again by era. Some periods are very heavily influenced by western European styles, and contain delights regardless. The Booty by Theodoros Rallis centres on a woman who scorns a pretty horrible fate. Nikiphoros Lytras’s gentle paintings Awaiting and The Kiss are wonderful. Many, much sterner, images remind you that modern Greece was forged in a long and gruelling war of independence. And of course there’s El Greco (Doménicos Theotokópoulos). If you’re a devotee, you’ll find three of his works here.

Now let’s set the paintings aside. After all, you want to read about printmakers. In a mezzanine between the ground and basement levels lies a small room filled with prints. Chief among these (for me) were relief prints by Yiánnis Kefallinós, a master engraver, typographer and teacher. My three favourites were My Father (1920), The Big Tree (1925), and The Banana Plant (1939).

I recognised Kefallinós’s work from a marvellous book given to me several years ago by my wife’s cousin Yiorgios: Two Centuries of Modern Greek Engraving. (Δυο Αιώνες Νεοελληνικής Χαρακτικής, ed. Nίkos Grigorákis, 2004, Govostis, ISBN 960-270-976-6). I doubt this book will ever see an English translation, which is a great pity. It catalogues many artists who deserve a wider audience. Now there’s a fun project: an English site about Greek printmaking! While we’re at it, why not an international online printmaking museum? Sign me up…

If you ever find yourself down Athens way and want to see more, there’s also a printmaking museum in one of the northern suburbs: Εngraving Museum at Grigorakis Gallery, Yakinthon 4, Palaio Psihiko, Athens. Telephone: +00 33 1 210 674 0806. It’s open from 6–9 on weekday evenings (probably excluding Monday). We just couldn’t find the time to visit in January. Hopefully I’ll be able to post a small report this summer.

There are many more images of work by Greek printmakers on the Eikastikon site. If you know any decent resources in English or Greek, please let me know. My Greek isn’t up to much but I’ll try and give a sense of what each site is about!

I hadn’t cut a block since the summer of 2006. Sooner or later something had to be done, so I browsed some old photos from a walk in Raleigh Park, the swamp-on-a-slope that runs down the hill behind our house. I stared at a picture of a hawthorn tree-trunk for a full minute before spotting the obvious: a face in the bark. There is something a little fey about the whole top end of the park, so this shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

The urgent need was to make marks on a block so I put an edge on my gouges, made a quick sketch and began to cut.

OK, the result isn’t up to much. My tool skills don’t extend to cutting fine detail in small blocks, and other mistakes crept in — the shadows are misplaced, the ivy resembles a noose — but at least it’s yer actual print on paper.

My oil-based ink had nearly frozen in the garage, but the cheap water-based stuff that rolls like thin black ketchup still took orders. Note to self: keep ink indoors over winter.

I learned another lesson: office paper is lousy for proofing. For this one I tore up some large sheets of good sketching paper and noticed the difference straight away.

After some cross words with my wonky nipping press, I downgraded to a wooden spoon and fingernails. The combination of hand burnishing and decent paper seems to agree with me. I can’t wait to try again with a larger, simpler piece.