Lykoporia, a beautiful seaside village in Peloponnesos, is the birthplace of Andreas Golfinopoulos. It is here that the artist retires whenever possible. His house, overlooking the Gulf of Corinth, is built on different levels, its exterior fancifully landscaped by Golfinopoulos himself. For him, it is not only a place of seclusion, meditation and creativity, but also a sanctum of inspiration. The sight of boundlessness and nature's grandeur munificently spreading before him, engender visions, which are, in turn, transmuted into artistic compositions based on experience.

The six entities so exhibited, comprising a four-year achievement, unfold like a story of transformation, since, in effect, one is the corollary of the other. The austere architectural space prevailing in the series "Seascape" is divided into broken geometric levels, which are further developed to schematize the "Cypress Tree" of the homonymous series. In this logical strain, the artist proceeds to the series "Cactus", "Crucifixion", "Tree" and "The Tree of Fire". At the same time, he is likely to imbue his forms with a twofold substance, surrealistically converting one form into another, and happily blending two different images: a cloud is oneirically transmuted into a woman's profile, while a trunk that has died down recalls the skeleton of a dead fish.

As in the past, so now, Golfinopoulos employs the golden section and configuration in order to produce an abstract, allusive depiction of the real world with a distinct character. Nevertheless, the orderliness of his representative writing is jarred, for the first time, by the vivid coloration that inundates the works of his last series "The Tree of Fire" as well as the uneven arrangement of canvases in space. Already from 1994, his paintings are embellished with three-dimensional bronze elements, like lines protruding from the picture; whereas in the following year, going a step further, he frees the chromatic iconic forms and allows certain organic process from austerity to the explosion of the chromatic gamut and the nonuse of conventional framing, evinces to the gradual culmination of the artist's importunate thoughts and feelings, and express an overt desire for freedom.

Bia Papadopoulou
Art Historian
24 September, 1998



THOUGHTS ON THE ART OF GOLFINOPOULOS

"Configuration is a means, not a formula" - Le Corbusier

Andreas Golfinopoulos and I have been bound together by a friendship and mutual respect of over twenty years. I met him for the first time in the 70's, when I had just graduated in architecture from Rome University, and was made professor at the Athens Technological Organization, the renowned Doxiadis institution.

Andreas as a painter and I as an architect, each from his own viewpoint, incited the students to study and analyze artworks and architecture configurationally. This common denominator brought us together and further allowed me to follow all stages of his artistic development. From the very beginning, Golfinopoulos laid stress on the structural aspect of infrastructure vis-à-vis the artistic effect. He could easily have been an architect - in the broadest sense of the word - as, indeed, I might have been a painter. This common ground of ideas and methodological concepts knit us together.

Golfinopoulos' artistic course was a taxing one, for it relied on rigorous discipline - a discipline spontaneous and intrinsic, a way of life that characterizes his overall work as an artist and a teacher.

Through the medium of geometry and the canvas of analytical research, Golfinopoulos delves into a treatment diffuse and perhaps incomprehensible to the layman.

The cypress trees and cacti in his garden, the vision of the feminine figure that "disturbs" the painterly landscape, are also an expressive medium. The secret lies in the end result; namely, sincerity. Events, images, dramatic experiences - a life recorded in a painterly form. The tree that becomes a cross, the creator who in an endless battle with his material and feelings bears witness to an art of top-notch quality.

Dr. Nikos Th. Holevas
Professor at Athens Technical University