Through the looking

"Through the looking-glass.........

.........................or from another dimension?"

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How to describe the paintings of Antonios?

How to describe the paintings of Antonios Santorinios? At first sight, his native language – German – seems to offer the neatest solution with the term ‘Hinterglasmalerei’, while Greek (‘ζωγραφική πάνω σε τζάμι’), English (‘painting on glass’) and French (‘peinture sur verre’) rather mislead the onlooker. Or do they? Perhaps nothing is as it seems here. Does ‘Hinterglasmalerei’ simply describe the technique of painting employed by this artist, or does it signify something more sophisticated, the reflection within his mind’s eye of an impression received from another dimension - a tranquil, idyllic Mediterranean world in which all is apparently well, a haven longed for by a soul in search of the ideals which are best described by the Greek words “ισορροπόια’, ‘ειρήνη’, ‘λιακάδα’? Is this a glance through the looking-glass, like that taken by the proverbial Alice ? Or is it an image as described by Plato in his Republic, in which reflections appear in the flickering light of a fire on a cave wall, far away from - but inside - reality? Certainly, Antonios paints on one surface of a piece of glass, but when it is framed and hung the picture is viewed from the other side. Can the onlooker be aware that the picture was painted ‘from another dimension’, that the tranquility and order in Antonios’ compositions were only achieved through a very precise process in which everything was conceived and constructed ‘back to front’- for most people a process of chaos? We can understand how a composition is built up on a canvas – the procedure is instinctively logical to us - but Antonios constructs his picture in reverse order. For example, in portraying a face he will first paint the eyes, nose and mouth - those features which in painting on canvas would be applied onto the flesh-coloured background. Then he covers the whole surface of the face, including the features, with the skin-colour. If his concentration has wandered, and he has inadvertently forgotten to add one of the eyes, then that particular figure is condemned to remain a Cyclops for all eternity; no correction is possible through the many layers of paint which have been applied on top of each other. What secret phantasies are at work here? What has prompted an individual who seems to radiate cheerfulness and optimism to take such a convoluted route to illustrate an idealistic, dream world where everything is as it should be, but in reality is not?

Perhaps that 19^th century atmosphere which made Munich a centre of Philhellenism passed on to Antonios an internalized iconography which found its ideal genre – painting. Antonios studied Fine Art at the Munich Art Academy , then Advertising Art at the Academy für das graphische Gewerbe, Munich . He first came to Greece in 1962, as an exchange student on a German-Greek Government Scholarship. This was when he finally recognized where his life had been leading him; it was just a matter of time before he abandoned his studies as an art teacher and settled permanently in Greece . The place was Santorini – the year, 1971. One day, while enjoying a cup of metrio coffee with an elderly neighbour in the village, he noticed a painting on the wall of her little parlour. She had painted it herself almost half a century previously, on the reverse side of a small pane of glass, and could recall a number of friends who had also worked in the same way. Inspired by what he had seen, Antonios began to experiment with the technique and was immediately fascinated by the dream-like luminosity it gave to the Aegean landscape - the play of sunlight and shade, the translucence of the sea, the stunning simplicity of white-washed houses and the ethereal brilliance of churches - through the application of colour directly onto glass. Finding that the weight and fragility of larger sheets of glass and the slow-drying of oil paints imposed limitations, he experimented with synthetic glass, mixing acrylic and oil colours; the results are stunning. All the time light is treated in terms of surface reflection and pictorial space is carefully organized.

Antonios sees the perfection around him, the enduring character of nature reflected in light on the water, the shimmer of olive leaves, the bare rocks of a karstic outcrop, the blue of the sky reflected in Homer’s wine-dark sea. Nothing can take away that dream from him or consign it to oblivion; it is the object of an on-going, conscious internalization, the resulting snapshots expressed by painting in back-to-front process. Nothing can affect his power of perception, or shake his equilibrium; he is master. Signs of the degradation of the environment are all around him, yet he records only what is good, what is beautiful. However, an apprehension for the future of this idyllic landscape is always there through his presentation of contrasts - cheerful, white-washed churches, fishermen, priests, boats, scenes of wine harvest and village feasts are depicted against a background of the lowering, dark cliffs of the volcanic leviathan that is Santorini, reflecting an on-going spiritual battle between light and darkness. The battle on the ground, perhaps represented at a basic level by those spawn of modern civilisation - the electricity pylon and the telephone pole – is nowhere apparent.

The work of Antonios displays his deep affection for his adopted Hellenic homeland; he offers a glimpse of a perfect island world which can be illusion or fact, promising peaceful repose and personal contentment – indeed, nothing less than a homecoming. Antonios’ paintings on glass, etchings and prints have found great resonance not only in Greece but also abroad, through more than 90 exhibitions over the last three decades, for example in Athens, London, Munich, Cincinnati USA, Sydney, Zurich, and Berlin. He has lived on Crete since 1991.

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