POLYKLEITOS RENGOS AT THE BYZANTINE MUSEUM

I consider Rengos to be a vastly undervalued Greek artist. He is one of my favourite Greek artists of all time and indeed my personal favourite of his generation, I prefer him to Moralis and Tsarouhis. All three of these artists may have been technically, equally gifted and indeed the likes of Moralis may justifiably be considered more innovative than Rengos. However there are profound sensibilities in Rengos’s work not apparent in the other two – certainly not to the same depth. For me Rengos’ work conveys immense empathy which is what truly separates him from other artists, makes him stand out, and resonates with me personally the most. His work is also more cerebral in some ways, than the other two, because there is incredible symbolism in his paintings. He is an artist whose manner evolved a lot in his career, his technically masterful earlier works shifted into a more sketchy approach later in life. Overall I would say I prefer his earlier work; however he created masterpieces throughout every period of his painting including his later work.

The exhibition at the Byzantine museum earlier this year focused on his ecclesiastical body of work. It included stunning engravings and paintings of the monasteries of Agion Oron which Rengos visited many times and so on.

The one work that stood out as a true work of genius was At the Refectory (an engraving of the work was also on display with the handwritten title by Rengos -- Refectory Mount Athos). The painting depicts monks at a dinner table. It is a stunning work with an incredible sense of movement and the expressions of the monks beautifully captured. With the subject matter being an all-male dinner in a religious context, to me this immediately recalled The Last Supper. With this in mind, what was genius about this work, was the juxtaposition of the hands of the monks with the bread they were eating, being painted in a similar manner deliberately creating a conspicuous visual link between the two recalling Christ’s words as he shared bread at The Last Supper saying the bread was his body. There is far more one can read into the work if you consider Rengos use of perspective, colour and light, the checked table cloth and so on. There is definitely a psychological element to it for me too. For example the way the tablecloth has been rendered resembles a grid; this could be interpreted as everything the monks do operate around a ‘grid-like’ system – rules, regiment, routine, repetition and so on.