On View
DIMITRIS YEROS
A LESBOS DIARY
July 2nd – September 12th, 2020
Catalogue available
New Gallery Hours
Monday – Saturday: 11 am – 5 pm
Image: Dimitris Yeros, Image: Dimitris Yeros, Kaloni, 2013
Throckmorton Fine Art is pleased to offer an exhibit of over forty black and white photographs and some color by Dimitris Yeros, one of the most influential Greek artists of his generation. The images span over thirty years of artist’s life on the island of Lesbos, having taken many hundreds of photographs and recorded every corner of the island. The selection chosen, represent one of many of the artist’s passions in life. The works largely consist of staged photographs created in his Athens, New York and Mytilene studios.
Lesbos is a Greek island at the edge of the Aegean Sea, close to the Turkish coast. In recent years it has become infamous because of the thousands of impoverished refugees and migrants, who arrive there hoping to seek safety and happiness in Europe. The Island of Lesbos has a long and noteworthy history, inhabited since prehistoric times. Lesbos was the birthplace of great ancient Greek poets such as Sappho, Alcaeus, Terpander and Arion. It is an economically wealthy island. Its inhabitants are mainly involved in olive cultivation and livestock farming. Given its geographical and cultural distance from Athens, and the small number of tourists who visit the island, local customs have survived, which the islanders are very proud of.
Yeros visited Lesbos in 1986 for a holiday, and it has since become his second home. It is where he prefers to spend his summers. As was to be expected, during his first few months on Lesbos, the photographs he took were mostly commemorative. Later, as he explored the whole island and understood the place and its people, he began to focus more on artistic subjects.
Large, mostly abandoned, buildings from the previous century, traces of a once thriving community, unique historical monuments from different eras, landscapes that have hardly changed through the millennia and locals indulging in work or leisure are some of the subjects he has captured.
He has also photographed many male models in the nude. Working sometimes in agrarian landscapes, in monuments, old buildings or ruins, portrayed in a manner reminiscent of the poses of ancient Greek statues. These photographs evoke both classic Greek civilization and the Romantic era of the late nineteenth century.
Yeros was born in 1948, a true son of the Mediterranean. Dimitris Yeros has had 58 individual exhibitions of his works held in Greece, Köln, Düsseldorf, New York, Kassel, Strasburg, Oxford (Oxford University), Darmstadt, Indiana – USA (Ball State Art Gallery), Heidelberg, Barranquilla-Colombia (Museum of Modern Art), Nicosia, Milan, Bochum (The Bochum Museum), Berlin, Wuppertal, Michigan (Kelsey Museum), Mexico (the National Museum) , Mannheim and elsewhere. He has also participated in numerous international group exhibitions, Biennales and Triennale’s in many parts of the world.
The following books with his works have been published: the collection The Sparkling Bathtub (Kastaniotis, 1976); the photo series Photo poem (Phyllo, 1977); the book Yeros, with text by Yannis Patilis (Phorkys, 1984); Dimitris Yeros, a book-catalogue of his works (The Bochum Museum, 1986); D. Yeros, a book with an essay by Professor Chr. Christou (Prefecture of Biotia, 1998);Theory of the Nude, with an introduction by P. Weiermair (Planodion, 1998); Periorasis, with a foreword by Michel Deon and an introduction by P. Devin (Phyllo, 1999); For a Definition of the Nude, with an introduction by P. Weiermair (Phyllo,2000); D. Yeros, with an essay by John Wood (Ermoupolis – Greece, 2001). Yeros – Caravouzis, with an essay by Athena Schina (Greece, 2008). In 2011 he published the book Shades of Love, inspired by poems of C.P. Cavafy with a foreword by Edward Albee and an introduction by John Wood (Insight Editions – California). In 2015 he published the book Photographing Gabriel García Márques
(Kerber Verlag), with an introduction by Edward Lucie-Smith. His most recent book is
Another Narcissus, with a poem by Edward Albee and an introduction by John Wood (Phyllo, 2016)
Numerous works by Dimitris Yeros can be found in many private collections, national galleries and museums worldwide:TateBritain, theInternationalCenterofPhotography-NewYork,MaisonEuropéennedelaPhotographie- Paris, the National Portrait Gallery – London, the British Museum – London, Museum Bochum – Germany, Tama Art Museum – Tokyo, The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts – Canada, the National Gallery – Greece, Museo de Arte Moderno – Barranquilla – Colombia,The Joseph M. Cohen Family Collection, Fondazione Benetton-Italy, the New Hampshire Institute of Art, The Leslie Lohmann Museum – New York and elsewhere.
THROCKMORTON FINE ART
145 East 57th Street, 3rd floor, NY, NY 10022
Tel. 212.223.1059 Fax. 212. 223 1937
Info@throckmorton-nyc.com www.throckmorton-nyc.com
