THE ARTISTS I HAVE GROWN UP WITH | INTRODUCTION

I have been exposed to infinite breath taking works of art in my life time. The reason I want to talk about my personal background in these blogs, is because the environment I grew up in, meant I had the privilege of growing up exposed to certain art that not all artists and designers get to see and experience. Since my parents specialised in the dealing of mainly contemporary Greek and Cypriot art I must have seen hundreds of exhibitions at their art gallery of hundreds of artists. These artists often lived with us for a period, so I would get to know the human beings behind the creativity. Of course I also grew up seeing my father create his many sculptures as well. In the 00s and 10s my parents also branched into the auction business. There I was also exposed to the work of amazing artists I had been previously unfamiliar with; most of these artists are deceased. Some of these artits’ works have ended up in our collection.

I have been influenced by a great number of these artists in some way. The artists that stand out for me most are: Polykleitos Rengos, Theodoros Pantaleon (his early work that was exhibited in our gallery), Andreas Charalambides (his early work that was exhibited in our gallery), Chris Gollon, Renos Loizou, my father George Kyriacou, Panagiotis Kalorkoti, Anthony Caro, Zenon Jepras, George Skoteinos (his early work), Hero Kanakakis, Christoforos Savva to name just a few! So I want to focus on a few examples who I feel may have influenced me the most. I am going to write about the influence of growing up surrounded by the art of Hero Kanakakis who I knew personally and whose art was exhibited in my parents’ art gallery. I am also going to write about the art of Christoforos Savva whose art we exhibited, but who is deceased, and I therefore never knew personally.