Georges Yatridès

Early years and personal life

Georges Yatridès was born in 1931 in France. His parents were Greek. During the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, they moved to France in 1917. His father was of Greek heritage, born in the United States, and studied in France. His paternal grandfather was a Christian Orthodox Deacon who worked as a pastor in Rock Springs, Wyoming. His great-grandfather was a Christian Orthodox Archimandrite.

Over the course of his lifetime, he has lived in France and the United States.

Career

In 1954 he exhibited paintings produced from 1945 to 1949 in Vichy. In 1956, his work was shown in Paris at Madame Chastenet de Gery's Gallerie des Voyelles. A representative of the International Galleries of Chicago was contracted to purchase Yatridès's works, which were sold to private collectors in Canada and the United States. Two works sold through the Chicago firm were Daybreak in Port and Landscape, both made in 1960.

From 1957 to 1965, he held solo exhibitions in the United States, Canada, Latin America, Switzerland, Great Britain and Greece, where his works were acquired by private collections and a museum. One solo exhibit was at the Contemporary French Masters in Chicago in 1959.

Yatridès was described by writer Vanessa Fize as "a great contemporary painter, driven by his passion for light and science". His work had elements of graphic art in the 1960s. The following decade he studied in Grenoble at the Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA) to research light and color. As his career progressed he explored use of different media and materials.

Yatridès made the large compositions that would characterize his art in the 1970s. In 1981, he exhibited paintings inspired by the Bible in three crypts in the Sacré-Cœur in Paris.

Events from the 1980s include:

On 17 January 1996, "Yatrides et son siècle" council was established to protect the public, civil and professional interests of Yatridès's works. The organization is composed of "senior officials" (tax administration director, police security officers, doctors).

Comparison to Kubrick

Art critics have suggested there are similarities between the monolith in Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey and a recurring monolith motif in the artwork of Yatridès. Arthur Conte suggests that Yatridès' Adolescent and Child canvas painted in 1963 has a slab similar to that of Kubrick. Sacha Bourmeyster, a semiology specialist, states that the Yatridès slab communicates supernatural life in a manner similar to that in 2001. Similarities between Yatridès' art and Kubrick's monolith have also been noted on CyberArchi, an on-line French architecture magazine.

Works

Selected works of Yatridès are: