Lightning, 1965

Yerassimos Sklavos, though he died barely forty years old, left behind a rich collection of completed works, based in large part on research and experiments concerned with how materials should be worked. Figurative rendering, with the human figure as the focus, occupied him for a brief period, until 1959, since his inclination to abstraction was innate and expression by means of non-figurative shapes just a matter of time. He preferred hard materials – marble, porphyrite, granite, quartzite and, more infrequently, iron and wood – and followed the traditional method of direct carving, while in 1960 he invented “telesculpture”, a personal technique by which he carved the materials more easily, using oxygen and acetylene flame. Thus, he excluded the random and exploited the possibilities of the light to the full, which he considered the beginning of the universe and the creation.

“Lightning” is fashioned from a compact volume of marble, with many angles to view it from, carved in such a way that the light traverses the surface, creating levels both illuminated and dark at opportune points. In this way it brings the material’s texture to prominence.