Nicholas Egon

NICHOLAS EGON By Fani-Maria Tsigakou Benaki Museum. This handsome book, skillfully organized and written by the Greek scholar Fani-Maria Tsigakou, is the record of a number of things a uniquely adventurous life, a devotion to the craft of making art that has today become extremely rare, and a lifelong devotion to Greece. At first sight, Nicholas Egon seems to fall into a perfectly recognizable category that of the British philhellene, always eager to celebrate the country of his choice. It is only rather gradually that one realizes the essential inaccuracy of this description. To begin with, he is not British by birth. He was born in what is now the Czech Republic. He became British only through the accident of war. He has almost as many connections with the Arab world as he does with Greece. The actual development of his work offers almost as many paradoxes as his life-story. As this volume shows, much of his early work was abstract or near-abstract. He also showed great skill as a portraitist and as a man with a frank appreciation of beautiful women, especially when nude or nearly so. The portraits and nudes were based on techniques used by the great Renaissance masters, whose drawings he studied assiduously in the British Museum. He also seems to have been aware of the virtues of certain Victorian draughtsmen. For example, the fine portrait of Sultan Qabous of Oman, reproduced here, could be mistaken at first glance for a work by J.F. Lewis. The bulk of the book, however, is taken up by Egon s landscape drawings some of Saudi Arabia and Jordan, but with a concentration in recent years on Greek subjects. Some of the earlier drawings in the series those featuring architectural subjects, such as a view of the so-called Renaissance Tomb at Petra have a close kinship to drawings made by 19th century artists such as David Roberts. The most characteristic, however, are quite different. The aim of artists such as Roberts or Edward Lear was to give Victorian stay-at-homes a good idea of things that they would never be able to see for themselves, while at the same time endowing these subjects with a glamour that evoked remote epochs. In an era of much easier travel, when our way of seeing is dominated by our familiarity with photographs, there seems to be small point in this. Anything the traditional artist-traveller can do, the camera can probably do better. What Egon does is to pick on subjects that seem trivial, or sometimes simply inchoate, and organize them for our inspection through his familiarity with abstract art. Though the drawings make virtuoso use of traditional techniques, their way of seeing the world is essentially contemporary. Egon s fierce concentration on often minute visual incidents on things that most people would think were not worth a second glance yields a series of memorable and surprising compositions, which at the same time never seems forced. The comparison that most immediately springs to mind is with the somewhat similar dry-brush drawings of the American artist Andrew Wyeth. These, however, tend to have a kind of folksiness that is not part of Egon s visual language. Another comparison, and it is a heavy one to sustain, is with some of the rare watercolours of Albrecht Durer. The real ancestors of best drawinbgs in this book are the Large Clod of Earth and the Small Clod of Earth in Vienna. They find the transcendent within the apparently trivial. --Edward Lucie-Smith

Ms Bettany Hughes Classicist, Art Historian and Television Presenter 14.01.2008 This is an utterly unmissable book. If you want to understand the relationship between landscape and memory, between passion, pleasure, pain and the human condition, between life and art - then buy, beg, borrow or steal a copy. The spectacularly varied and vigorous life of the artist Nicholas Egon's reads like a work of epic literature. He runs away from the family castle in Czechoslovakia with 7 English pounds and a silk dressing-gown) , to the killing-fields of the Middle East and Europe, into the salons of the beau-monde and the private rooms of kings and queens, princes and princesses. His journey takes him via a tent on Isis Meadows (penniless he lived al fresco on dried egg and lettuce while studying at Oxford); a stint as hotel bell-boy in the South of France; and cycling the streets of war-time London painting cinema posters for nine pence a pop. Wherever he travels there is a pen, pencil or paintbrush close to his swift, subtle hand. His dedicated and inspired eye is our gain: we see the exquisite beauty and the exquisite horror of world events we chose to forget: the famine in Athens in 1950; a Greek Civil War that left children's bodies floating downstream through picture-postcard perfect Arcadian landscapes; the blank despair of Europe's refugees. But we also see a 16 year old Helen Mirren studying her own portrait; the arid, rock-hard gauntlet of Arabian deserts; Cyclopean architectural remains, monumental since antiquity; the pearl-fresh wonder of a Greek meadow in springtime; almond-blossom in an azure sky; limpid, lovely women. We are reminded that great men travel through life with their eyes open; that contemplating the world around us with verve, wisdom and without prejudice, encourages us also to love and respect it. The spirit of Nicholas' extraordinary life blazes from his extraordinary paintings. Today we need to understand the connection between East and West; between internationalism and intimacy; between singularity and geo-politics, between sensuality and the spirit, between art and the potential of the human experience. Nicholas Egon does not just understand them, he has lived them. The wildly adventurous artist has devoted his life to contemplating, adoring and incarnating this earth of ours. This, the resultant book is simply glorious; treat yourself. The world becomes a more beautiful, stimulating and exciting place because uniquely inspirational artists and thinkers such as Nicholas Egon inhabit it. His drawings and paintings do more than just immortalise, they celebrate, they make a difference. This is a feast for heart and soul. Sublime. --Ms Bettany Hughes

Mr. Neil MacGregor Director The British Museum. 27.xii.07 Dear Nicholas, In the quiet moments between Christmas and New Year, I am reviewing the books that have come recently into the office. Among them is your superb Benaki publication, and I have spent a very happy hour, transported by your painting to a world far from London s December greys. What I particularly admire is the way you catch heat heat that you can see, feel, almost smell. Your 2004 Grasses at Mount Olympos, for example, have an immediacy of sensation that is very rare indeed, and it is not just the view-point or the proximity (though that is clearly important), but the way you see and then render the seen. BRAVO! But I also learnt a lot of new things about you, not least the labour of preparing a Runciman lecture (he was a friend, as well as a hero, so I am particularly delighted that you founded the lecture series). And I had no idea you could handle Arabian falcons! Thank you so much for sending it to me. I hope we meet many times in 2008. With all good wishes to you and to Matti for a very happy New Year. Yours ever Neil. The Viscount Norwich 4.xii.07 My Dear Nicholas Your superb book has arrived Molly and I are proud indeed to have it, and send you all our enthusiastic and heartfelt thanks. I was fascinated, not only by the astonishing beauty and virtuosity of your work which I of course knew well already but also by the story of your early life, which I didn t know about at all. What a marvellous life you have lead and indeed are still having. Long may it continue. Bravo! With all love and thanks to you and Matti John Julius --Mr. Neil MacGregor and John Julius