Neoklis, life and work
JAN VERDONK
Greece may have closed a dark chapter of its history on paper, but the effects of its mega-crisis will be felt in the daily lives of its people for years to come. The article below introduces you to the life and work of Neoklis Kolliopoulis, a successful icon painter of his time and also Jan Verdonk's teacher. Even though Neoklis stopped painting icons years ago, he still comes to Amsterdam regularly to give master classes and lectures to Jan's students. In September 2019, he visited all groups again and give two lectures and a workshop that could also be followed by other interested parties.
Neoklis (born 1958) grew up in a farming family in a village on the northwest side of the Peloponnese. In Athens, he found work as a house painter. He is at the beginning of the rediscovery by Greek icon painters of the Byzantine-Cretan school, the best and most successful painter of his time he was. Yes, in 1996 he had 600 commissions lying around. The reason for this is that around 1950 there was a teacher at the Academy of Athens, Fotis Kontoglou, who went to Athos for research, and came across all these beautiful icons in depots, and thought: that's just painting! Then he found out that that was the Cretan school, which was no longer considered beautiful. So he started to paint in that style at the academy, he made it standard.
So he started painting in that style at the academy, he wrote the standard painting book, Ekfrasis (1960), the improved version of Dionysius of Fourna's Hermeneia (1725) and picked up the new style in his way, naively though! In 1970 you already have sparse painters influenced by Kontoglou, including the team of students with whom he started painting churches. And Neoklis began painting icons in that style in 1980. Training: none. The painters on holy Mount Athos and in Athens did not want to see him, not even cleaning brushes. One Afroditi showed him a few things in 1983 and that wasn't it. With Philippos, who had attended the academy in Bologna, he set to work. The stories! He destroyed the first icon with linseed oil and sold it at the Monastiraki market. “He won't be dry anno now!”. Then he was one of the first (maybe 5 in all of Athens) to target the great Cretans. In 1990 I met Neoklis, and then he taught me. At that time it was not clear that this would be the style. Neoklis could only tell me, this is the best you can do, you really have to do this. And 10 years later he said: Well everybody is painting Cretan. So it's been a huge revival. And we ourselves have witnessed that change. We have seen it change before our eyes. And the nice thing is, we are all completely in that new style together.
One hundred Dutchmen from the school of Jan and 100,000 Greeks!
Neoklis stopped painting in 2001. I have the impression that he got tired of it; he also did it perhaps too long, and too professionally. He now paints decorative techniques. Marbling he can do very well. Icon painting collapsed in Greece, he had to stop. Because after the Perestroika, all the Eastern Europeans who could paint a little bit with maybe academy came to Greece to make a living from icon painting. And they gave an awful lot of competition to the Greek painters. And that hurt Neoklis. Because those people worked at material costs or even less to get into the market.J ust desperados. Neoklis was a respected icon painter and he couldn't compete with that. He said, “I'm not going to sell icons for 25 euros”. It was very bad for him. Not everyone sees a difference in quality. I think that's true. That a customer in downtown Athens can't tell if a good painter or a bad one has been working. So now you understand, Neoklis with his refined technique was just pushed away from the market. And still now, he says, “I don't go into icons anymore, because it's all become so cheap and making an icon takes some effort anyway, making your own paint and so on. I just don't do that anymore, that's over”. And can't he start teaching then?
I suggested that but we also always talked to him about poverty in Greece, he says, “there is poverty, I can't get pupils, one of the two of a couple works for the rent of the apartment and from the income of the other they have to live. They both have to work!”. Such is the situation in Greece. On the islands, when you see the high prices of icons, you see the audacity of the sellers of icons. The middlemen and the monasteries take the profits. A large icon of 2,000 € or of 6,000 € is a matter of trade, Neoklis never intervenes.
In 2019, Greece has become even poorer. Because of the austerity imposed by the Troika (they say there) of the IMF, ECB and EEC, families live off the meager pension of the grandparents. Drink a Greek coffee on a terrace, you can sit one hour. No icon painter works in his trade anymore. Neoklis works three days out of a month, he cannot climb the ladder but stands downstairs mixing paint and indicating it to the young apprentice. The demise of a great painter.
With Philippos things were different. Not so honorable, he makes fake icons with prints on silk.
A booklet of icons by Neoklis called “Icons of Neoklis Kolliopoulos” is for sale on this website at this link.