Interior 1958

Periklis Vyzantios made this pastel drawing, called Interior, probably in his studio. Look at the way he’s used color – not to describe things exactly, but to give us a mood, an atmosphere. It's all about how those pinks and reds talk to the blues and greens. You can almost feel the sunlight filtering through the curtains. The surface is pretty worked over, with lots of little hatched marks that create a feeling of texture and movement. It’s like he’s building up the image layer by layer, letting the colors blend and bleed into each other. See how the red of the couch kind of vibrates against the pale green of the wall? That's where the magic happens! It's not just a couch and a wall – it's a whole world of feeling. Vyzantios’s process reminds me a bit of Bonnard, in the way he uses color to create a sense of intimacy and warmth. Art's like a big conversation that never ends, with artists borrowing and riffing off each other's ideas. It’s always open to interpretation, and that’s what makes it so exciting.