Composition for a Dramatic Theme, 1956

Giorgos Zongolopoulos worked with figurative depiction centered on the human being for a considerable period of time before moving on to completely abstract compositions. The realistic portraits he did, by and large before 1940, were succeeded by full-bodied figures with a steadily growing intensification of the simplified and schematic forms, particularly apparent in the Fifties.

In 1956 Giorgos Zongolopoulos represented Greece at the Venice Biennale with the work “Composition for a dramatic subject”. Still working within the framework of representational art, but with an equally intense schematization evident, this time concentrated in elongation, he created a composition with two standing figures, one dressed as a female, erect, frontal and taller, and a nude male, who is about to fall but is held up by the woman, who embraces him protectively. This composition, with the flat rendering of the surfaces and the incorporation of geometric shapes without volume, would be the forerunner of non-figurative works that would follow during the Sixties, done from a constructivist point of view. The composition that belongs to the National Gallery is a variation in a smaller scale of the work exhibited at the Venice Biennale and is a gift of the Ministry of Education in 1967.