May 1967
1967
The work is displayed as part of the permanent exhibition
Painting
From the series: And regarding the remembrance of evils …1967-1997 series
Acrylic on conservation cardboard stuck on sea-water resistant plywood
116.9 x 60.5 cm
Donated by the artist, 2002
Inv. No. 234/02
The series And regarding the remembrance of evils… 1967–1997 is to Dimosthenis Kokkinidis, an artist with an intense social and political discourse, a spontaneous personal record of the dramatic events of the early days of the dictatorial regime of 1967. Starting from the photos of uniformed army officers that fill contemporary newspapers, in May 1967 the artist starts to paint the “protagonists” on some packaging cardboard he had found lying forgotten in his studio. The heavily distorted, caricature-like figures are rendered either in an abstract form without clear features and details or in an intensely expressionistic idiom. The severe, almost suffocating painterly space, the choice and use of colour, and the eloquent symbolisms dominate these works and graphically convey the feeling of lost freedom, the anxiety about the future, and the loathing for those responsible for the country’s tribulations. Most of the series was completed by December 1967, but the works remained hidden in the artist’s studios. Some of them were exhibited thirty years later, in 1997, at the Astra Gallery under the title …And regarding the remembrance of evils… 1967–1997.
Eleni Ganiti, ENTER EMST: Collection and history, A short guide, 2020