MAKIS THEOFYLAKTOPOULOS

MAKIS THEOFYLAKTOPOULOS

EROTIC DRAWINGS

On Thursday, January 22^nd, from 19:00 to 21:00, Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center

presents a selection of Makis Theofylaktopoulos’ Erotic Drawings.

The exhibition will run until March 07^th 2026.

Almost three years after his death, the work of Makis Theofylaktopoulos continues to preoccupy us. An enduring quality is, after all, an indisputable characteristic of truly significant painting. The current exhibition at the Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center presents a selection of works from the series he called Erotic Drawings, mixed media drawings that the artist created from 1978 until the end of his life.

Anyone who knew Theofylaktopoulos and is familiar with his explosive temperament and eventful life, understands that in his Erotic Drawings he gives form to aspects of his personality and his attitude toward life’s fundamental questions. His experiences, his uncontrollable emotions, love, his indifference to social conventions and his constant anxiety for movement and progress permeate his entire work, forming an attitude towards life and art that could be described as quintessentially existential.

In his Erotic Drawings, the power of movement and the transcendence of space through it are fundamental elements of his visual language. The artist does not align himself with specific trends or styles, but develops a personal manner that leads the viewer beyond the conventional limits of representation. The forms are sometimes imposed, solitary and condensed in space, and sometimes interact with each other with intensity and turmoil, inscribing their outlines with varying degrees of clarity on the painted surface.

At the same time, the economy of his artistic idiom, the empty space and the large areas of monochrome in certain works introduce a more internal, almost private dimension, revealing the constant negotiation between form and its environment. This relationship, already present in previous sections of his work, emerges here as an organic part of his overall quest and completes the dialogue between the inscription of the human trace and the significance of the space that surrounds it.

It is ultimately evident in this series of drawings that the gamble Theofylaktopoulos won through his entire body of work was that he never separated art from his life, but remained true to himself, expressing what concerned him and infusing his work with his very essence.