Crowds 1970

Alekos Kontopoulos made 'Crowds' with what looks like watercolor and pencil, maybe some ink, and its all about layering. The colors are muted, somber even, mostly greys and blacks, but then you get these jolts of red. It’s a pretty effective way to wake you up! You can really see the hand of the artist in the scratchy lines and the way the paint bleeds into the paper. It's like he's not trying to hide the process, but embracing it. Look at the lower left, the way the paint has pooled and dripped, its full of information! And the geometric shapes floating in the background? Feels like he is channeling Klee or Kandinsky. It's like he's saying, "Here's the crowd, but also, here's the world they live in, all fragmented and a bit chaotic." It's cool how Kontopoulos brings together figuration and abstraction. Definitely food for thought.