Thus in the first large entity, we can distinguish two groups of work. The first contains her student works which move between naturalism and a relatively abstract form. The other group contains completely abstract works in which are included a very small number of works with recognizable but strongly distorted figures which foreshadow the second large entity. This entity, which succeeds the first, is subdivided into three groups arranged according to the materials used: oils, acrylics, mixed media. But let us look at each of these categories separately and then endeavor, as much as we can, to interpret them. In all the above cases, color is the structural material used for the painting surface. Everything is brought to completion through it, regardless of whether we are dealing with oils, acrylics or mixed media. In the first entity, we saw the painting career of Svoronou commenced with her student works at the Athens School of Fine Arts (1956-1960) which as was mentioned above are moving between naturalism and a relatively abstract form, while some tend towards complete abstraction. In the more naturalistic works the conversation being conducted with the external world is crystal-clear. This world can be mistaken for one of chromatic solidity and at first glance appears to belong to the tradition of Cezanne; however, it is not. This is because the solidity of the depicted object is in fact questionable, and this undermines both the chromatic Cezannistic stability and the classicistic stability of Svoronou’s teacher, Yannis Moralis. In Svoronou, the world is possessed by an unexpressed, as yet, animism. Thus the solidity of the external form is placed at risk by an interior mobility which shows the object as being smothered within the outline. I would say, indeed, that the painter in this manner declares her involvement with the objects themselves and “it’s as if her mind had the desire to express more the sensations that arise from touch and the motion of muscles, than the sensation of vision” (Marion Milner, When You Aren’t Able to Paint, Ellinika Grammata, Athens 1995). Thus, in a work from 1959 called Stool, the two receptacles which have been placed on it do not sit there motionless, but display an internal quiver and move as if they have a soul. Their form does not exude anything definitive and accomplished, but rather the flexibility of the possible. So starting with her very first works one finds the germ of those characteristics in the painter’s work which would become dominant in her later creations, such as the feeling of the potential possessed by the painting surface, and animism.

Svoronou violates the solidity of the external world even further in the more abstract works belonging to this group. Here reality is reduced to a shallow chromatic surface. With these works, whose subjects are taken from everyday scenes in working class neighborhoods, the painter is experiencing painting itself. She disengages herself even further from the external space and produces her own, by means of the painting act itself, as, moreover, the tradition of modernism stipulates. That is, if in the preceding sub-entity the space was already there before the act of painting took place, which it is then called on to represent, here the space does not exist without the painting act. In the end it constitutes a consequence of the painting act. Subsequently, preconditions are thus created to detach to an even greater degree what already was there as a potential condition in the previous works, a loosening of the solidity of the defined limits. The forms now tend to dissolve within their own color and be transformed into spots of color. The external reality is thus, in the end, reduced to chromatic surfaces.

The above were also student works, but much more abstract than the first, and lead us to the next group from the same entity, the one given over to complete abstraction. Except for the fact I am not sure if the word “complete” is the proper one in this case, at least when considering the degree to which the painter was motivated by impressions garnered from the outside world, something, furthermore, that can be understood from the titles themselves, referring as they do to landscapes. These works indeed depict impressions derived from landscapes, or rather feelings derived from these impressions and thus appear agitated and mobile. I would say that Svoronou gives more weight to the inner life of the material which fashions a landscape, than its form. That is where, I think, lies the internalized mobility and fluidity found in her works, which is then further strengthened by the material itself, oil paint. Perhaps the most representative of the works of this sub-entity is Turmoil. We are now completely removed from the external world, both on the level of form and theme/content – the title of the work alone will tell us. The word “turmoil” reveals more a condition or situation, not only internal but external as well. And if this “turmoil”, taken as an internal emotional situation, is readily perceptible, but taken as a characteristic of the external world contains a vagueness which, however, clears up once we are transferred from the level of form to that of material. Svoronou receives the color of landscape not as a surface, but as a material, as a mass, and thus converses with the materiality of the world, with its corporeality. But this is material that hides in its very innards the energy which motivates it, a material that is in a condition of constant potentiality, formless on the one hand, but containing an infinity of forms, potentially, on the other. This fact will become more manifest in a very limited number of works that are also part of this sub-entity we are examining and in which emerge recognizable figures, but ones ready to be reabsorbed by the same material which produced them, that is, color color1 color1. These figures are very distorted and they include both monstrous and various animalistic forms; taken together with the other two elements we mentioned above, the potentiality and animism, they will come to constitute, from then on, the painter’s unvarying principles for the following period, which is also the most important one.

Before I finish with this first period, I would like to refer to two or three works works1 works2 which can be included here and which I do not consider as fortuitous in any way, despite their small number. These are “portraits” which are placed in a completely abstract color context. That is, in reference to a surrounding space that is inundating them and for that reason threatening, much larger than the figures themselves. At the same time, these figures appear to have been placed in danger by their interior distortion, which is exerting pressure to be expressed, and indeed will be expressed in the next period.

I would like, however, to persist a while longer with the “corporeality” of the Svoronou’s painting, to which, moreover, is also owed the presence of all the above mentioned characteristics of her art, and to refer to a period of her activity right after she finished her studies at the Athens School of Fine Arts, and which contributes to what I have called her materiality and corporeality. After 1961, Svoronou became involved with the applied arts, in this case with painting on fabric. More specifically, she painted dresses, in their finished form, when they are ready to wear, so that in the final analysis one could say that she was painting the bodies themselves. But something more must be added, for in the end this is not about the bodies considered merely as a definitive form, but rather as a potential material, both literally and metaphorically. This is not just about a biological body but also about many imaginary bodies. By extension, works such as The Print in Yellow and The Print in Pink, where the form of a dress/body emerges through a multitude of colors, clearly express this tendency of the painter. But also authoritative regarding her attachment to material are the mixed media she uses from time to time and which will acquire a more specific form in her second period. Bits and pieces of fabric and wood are called upon to play a pictorial role, thus adding to the work the aesthetic category of texture and expressing for yet another time the fact that Svoronou’s work does not only have a visual character but, first and foremost, a palpable one as well. And I thus come back to my original position that the painter was more involved with the sensations that arose from touch and the movement of the muscles, than the sense of sight.

The second large period in Svoronou’s work started between 1979-1980 and is an ongoing one. From this time on, the painter abandons the external world and converses with her own inner world and personal mythology, even when she is involved, as in her later works, with subjects of a social and political nature, such as the developments in the Balkans and the war in Iraq. It could be maintained that a certain minor categorization could be applied to this second large entity which is related to the materials used, in this case, oils, acrylics and mixed media. The first is characterized by a fluidity of the painting surface, while the other two, which come after the oils chronologically, produce forms more solidified with clear-cut outlines.

This period starts, as I mentioned earlier, with oils and displays a strong expressionistic temperament. The color is abundant and builds a painting surface in which the material appears to be of prime importance, that is, the selfsame chromatic material itself, and not the form and the outline. The surface thus produced, obedient to the nature of the material which creates it as well, appears to be fluid and is not obedient to any organizing force, any factor outside it, that is, of any mastermind. Conversely, it proclaims that the material itself, this selfsame material, carries within it the energy which drives it, and consequently each form-generating potential. The forms which are produced in this manner are therefore in a potentialized situation, subject to a fragile equilibrium while the sum total of the painting space, correspondingly, acquires a potential character of its own and is neither definitive nor complete. I would say that in the first works from this period, the color is not an organizing or compositional principle but rather it decomposes, permitting, when that is deemed necessary, the emergence of a certain form. These works are reminiscent of the flow of lava from a volcano which as it constantly spreads along, acquires momentary forms in line with the obstacles it encounters, until it finally sets.

The majority of themes in the above works have to do with human figures, animal forms and combinations of the two. A human and animal space, but also a supernatural one, containing figures of angels and mythical beings often jumbled together without any clear boundaries where the one tends to be transformed into the other.

This kind of painting did not, in any way, prevent Svoronou from creating in her later works more solid forms, either with oils or, to an even greater degree, with acrylics. But with an important difference which I think is due, up to a point at least, to the potentials of the material itself: the forms in oil are more viscid as if they were obedient to the thickness of the mass of oil paint, while the acrylic figures appear more solidified and without this feeling of the viscid, that is, of mass mass1 mass2. Here the surface of the visible form tends to occupy the thickness of matter, a form not so much potential but definite. And here the material, acrylic, is more obedient to the workings of a “mastermind” which gains ground in relation to the “formless” material. But if we pay closer attention, we will confirm that in this case as well, Svoronou has remained consistent to her basic characteristics which, however, change their level of expression. This is precisely where the inner consistency, the inner backbone, as it were, in any artist’s works lies, the presence of which constitutes, in my opinion, the most important criterion for judging the sum total of his or her work. Thus, characteristics such as fluidity, mobility, and potentiality are transposed from the level of material to that of form and meaning. The original freedom of flow possessed by the material is thus succeeded by the flow of a free association of meaning which produces a painting surface of multiple significance. But this multi-layered meaning does not simply constitute a mind game, but rather corresponds to the multiple facets of existence.

Thus, in addition to the coexistence of the humans, animals and supernatural beings we mentioned above, here there also appear scenes from human life which reveal her double, and even multiple, sence: human sexual intercourse at one and the same time the source of life and death, the maternal relationship, love and hate, war, catastrophe and deliverance, where stairs appear as symbols of flight and communication with the sky lending to the images of horror and destruction an apocalyptic character, as the schematically drawn horsemen acquire a double meaning, one as the deus ex machina and the other as the destroyer destroyer1 destroyer2.

Finally, an infant by itself, inflated, as if it were the symbol of the commencement of life, reddish so you would think it had just come out of the womb, is encircled by a host of images, apparently unconnected, by means of which it communicates with the surrounding world. It is there as a symbol of the reduction of adulthood to iconic thought, before reason is firmly established, back when the senses function simultaneously, without any hierarchy. Space of night, of each and every night, literal and metaphorical, where there exist fears, phobias, dreams, painful processes but redemptive as well and which swell up here, in Svoronou’s work, through notional vagueness and the uncommon and paradoxical, which in part is a reference to the dream world of Chagall. This vagueness and strangeness will also serve to strengthen the mixed media through the insertion of bits and pieces of fabric, and wood and bone from dead animals, which are called upon to change their meanings as they are transformed into something else, into many other things, either as shapes or content.

But what does the painting of Pepi Svoronou mean when taken as a whole? First and foremost, this is color painting which either composes and “decomposes”, as it were, forms. In the latter case, the meaning is focused more on the material itself, while in the former it is on the shape as well which emerges from the material. But in both these cases the driving force is the soul, the psyche, and the body, and to a much greater degree than the mind. That is also why the image which emerges is closer to the image making process found in dreams and the production of a space which is not obedient to the dictates of Euclidian geometry and a time which is not obedient to the linear conventional time of everyday life. Finally, I would say that here we are in the land of myth, but also the land of the human unconscious, a place that cannot be identified with the limited meaning of the repressed, but in agreement with Freud, is reminiscent of the presence of a primitive flight mechanism or the presence of a vital instinct, where anything censored by rational thought can take refuge for that reason. It is the place where instincts and desires are in ceaseless conflict and while seemingly irrational, is nevertheless not that way at all. It is obedient to a form of logic qualitatively different from that of thought, a logic which also includes sensation, and for that reason is redemptive. This is the place where the forms of multiple meaning are produced which ignore the fundamental coordinates of western thought, such as the principles of identity and contradiction. Here everything can be many things, all at one and the same time. The relationship of the painter with the external world appears to depend more on her imaginary body than on the intellectually concentrated mind. Furthermore, the clothing she painted was, down deep, a form of imaginary body which was inserted between the biological body and the external world and was produced by the unconscious psyche and not the reflective mind. And because the unconscious psyche, in which the life instinct lurks, is identified, in the western tradition, with the woman, as are all the other characteristics of fluidity, whereas the mind is identified with the male, as well as the corresponding characteristics of stability, then I would say that Svoronou’s painting is female painting par excellence. It is the place the male world fears. In fact, the painting in question is not easy to digest because it bears within itself the “curse” of living color which by the very nature of its fluid texture, suggests not the composition of solid forms, but rather the “decomposition” I mentioned above. By extension, this use of color which is not obedient to the organizational function of the outline, hides within itself the discontent one feels before the formless, that is, the fear of madness and death.

When academic painting was created in the 17th century, there broke out in France a dispute between the adherents of color and the champions of the drawing. A dispute over how much color was able to draw on its own and not merely function as a complement to a drawing/outline. The adherents of drawing, who had the upper hand in classically-minded France, maintained that “color, in regard to the composition of the painting, cannot produce hues and shades except through the material substance itself, which bears its own color as part of itself, at that point where it is simply not possible to color something red with a green color, nor blue with yellow. Thus the color depends exclusively on its material, and is therefore less noble than the drawing which derives from the intellect” (Max Imdahl, Couleur, Éditions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris 1996, p. 35). The adherents of color would counter that it is not material, but rather the soul which God instilled in man. If we cast a glance at the Neo-Platonic system of values dominant in the Renaissance, when this dispute between color and drawing began, we will confirm that the soul is closer to the body than the mind. Thus the dispute between drawing and color echoes, and particularly during the 17th century, the Cartesian dualism of mind and matter, where natural mind has the upper hand. This dispute in Cartesian France, ruled by reason, would reach its climax in the 19th century in the struggle between Neoclassicism and Romanticism and would lead the neoclassical Ingres to say that colour is the “living part of art”.

The antagonism would be continued between Cubism and Expressionism and would then be transferred to Greece by the French-educated generation of the Thirties, where drawing was given the primary role. Thus color which was not subjected to the organizing force of the spirit came to represent for intellectualist western society, the threat of disintegration. And this is what happened, of course, because it made material and therefore the body, of equal value with the spirit. That is why I believe that Svoronou’s painting belongs in the so-called “damned” color tradition. This is a form of painting where there does not appear to be any preexisting purpose which is then called on to give form to the painting act, but on the contrary, the purpose is contained in this act and emerges from within it. Consequently, if the former case corresponds to “I paint”, and suggests the existence of some specific goal, the latter corresponds to “painting”, and the undisciplined impetuousness of matter, of the body, that is, and the unconscious psyche by means of which this latter is expressed, or rather, its presence shouts out to us, but we refuse to accept it.