10 colored drawings for the poems of George Seferis 1965

Yiannis Moralis made this colored drawing for the poems of George Seferis sometime during his life, probably with gouache or tempera. The color palette feels very personal to Moralis, with those murky greens and blues, and then pops of bright pink and yellow. It's like he's working from memory, pulling colors and shapes from his imagination. I really like the thick black lines that define the forms in the piece. They are really confident, but not at all precise, and some look as if he used a very small brush, almost like calligraphy. Take a look at the area around the statue figure on the right-hand side. The way that the pink of the building bleeds into the black lines suggests it has been reworked, and the colors feel very particular to that time. This is similar to how Milton Avery would work, with those blocks of color that don't quite line up. Like Avery, Moralis embraces the idea that a painting can be an open space where ideas and feelings can meet.