La Peinture naïve de Thalia Kalligianni : un panorama paysagiste et culturel de la Crète dans la première moitié du xxe siècle

Abstract

Abstract: The current study highlights the naive art of Thalia Kalligianni (1906-1988) an intellectual artist of Cretan origin, who marked by her polyvalent action the intellectual life in Crete, in the middle of the 20th century. Novelist, journalist and publisher, Kalligianni was almost self-taught in painting, although gifted with a creative instinct and a strong personality. Her pictorial work attempts a euphoric journey, through her childhood memories, in the folklore, the mores and the customs of the Cretan countryside. The study has three sections. In the first part, the accent is put on the historical and socio-cultural context in Crete which marked her personality from her earliest youth. In the second part, we proceed to the analysis of some of her paintings representative of her rich thematic areas, created with oil colors or watercolors: landscapes or “veduti”, portraits of Cretan people, paintings of ethnographic interest, still-life painting and mythological subjects. In the third section, the study considers the peculiarity of this « innocent » painting which suggests an intimate realism and transmits “the aromas” of Crete. We consider in particular her instinctive but skillful aptitude of composition and color. Kalligianni donated almost all of her pictorial work to the Municipality of Chania.

Keywords

• Thalia Kalligianni
• naive painting
• Crete
• Chania
• early and mid 20thcentury
• Cretan folklore