I was fascinated by these creations of Nature, but also captivated by the cosmetics, the fake eyelashes, the varnished pearly finger and toe nails and the scent of patchouli, which has nothing to do with love. Above all, what drove me completely wild was the 'wealth' displayed around their shoulders, draped across their breasts, where the head of the fox fur meets its tail.

This is how one might revise the second paragraph of Marquez Memories of My Melancholy Whores, to describe the melancholic women depicted in the paintings of Stavros Hatzioannou.

Distant descendants of the Demoiselles d'Avignon, they are less angular, more lonely and they have no wish to communicate with each other. Their lips are sealed in silence, melancholic or apologetic. Marquez writes that "Defenceless love becomes innocent through its silence". And the shy eyes of the virgin long for the next meeting.

Clothes seem superfluous. Embracing bodies are like landscapes, the dynamics of love; essential and undisclosed passion, secret love, an obscured view: darkness. The inevitable indigo blue of the night sky; the curve of the body. The contrasting bittersweet taste of love and death, the silence and cries of love. The veils of smoke and mystery, the sound of distant jazz.

The sorrow of Mallarme bodies; an act from Schnitzlers carousel of love; the celebration that becomes mundane. The mind of the thinker is overwhelmed by lust while he turns "pages of notebooks on ethics"; if he was a philosopher, he would maintain the remote objectivity of the creator.

We seem to see the hand of many different painters within one artist as he reflects a myriad of experiences and impressions absorbed throughout his life and in his art.

Dr. Vivi Vasilopoulou
Archaeologist - Art critic