Panayiotis Tetsis was a Greek painter. Tetsis was a genuine exponent of the post-impressionistic seascape tradition.
Born in 1925 on the island of Hydra, where he spent his childhood and early teenage years, Tetsis moved to Piraeus in 1937 .
Legacy
Though the artist depicts marine themes that are familiar to him – mostly set against the backdrop of Hydra and Sifnos. “If I take a long voyage at sea, I get bored,” Tetsis says, “and I don’t agree with Cavafy that headed for Ithaca we ought to hope that the voyage lasts as long as possible.” And he adds: “I paint a large number of my seas from memory. I don’t need to paint them from life. And even if I do, I change them later in my studio, even changing them totally.”
Balancing discipline and emotion, Tetsis regards himself as a painter driven by the senses. His singularity, according to Koutsomallis, consists in his combination of “elegiac colour tones, compositional clarity and precision, thematic variety, a monumental character and freely, openly sketched contours”.
In 1949 Tetsis along with Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas, Yannis Moralis, Nikos Nikolaou, Nikos Engonopoulos and Yiannis Tsarouchis, established the “Armos” art group.
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