Liza Kottou, 1947

Giorgos Bouzianis studied and spent the greater part of life in Munich, where his work received acclaim. He was a member of the postwar generation of Expressionists, but his oeuvre is primarily associated with the independent Expressionists such the Austrian Oskar Kokoschka and the French Chaim Soutine. Although he painted other subjects including still lifes and landscapes, the human figure predominated in his work. Through strong expressive distortions and a style resembling a palimpsest, Bouzianis succeeded in expressing existential angst, human destiny, the final deterioration and death. His figures are drawn with broad brushstrokes that are digested in a confusion of color. The osmosis of figure and space is so powerful that the figure appears as if it is being born of a painful chromatic hell, of a disruption that betrays a powerful psychic and emotion charge. Bouzianis employs unusual and highly individual color harmonies. His style presages that of de Kooning and other American Abstract Expressionist painters.