Ian Vorres on Iannis Nikou

Iannis Nikou is a many-sided personality with a penetrating mind and a wind encyclopedic education. He graduated from the Higher School of Fine Arts in Athens and studied acting and stage direction in the Athens School of Theatre and Cinema. Concurrently he was also studying guitar and mosaic. In Genoa, Italy, where he lived for some years, he studied photography as well. Despite the numerous opportunities offered him for a successful career abroad, he was always attracted to Greece. In 1991, he settled permanently in an idyllic estate in Macedonia near the city of Drama, where, in a super-modern studio, he is wholeheartedly dedicated to painting.
It is not accidental that, as fervent patriot, the inspiring and inexhaustible source of Greek history proved the motive power behind the epic and prolific oeuvre of Iannis Nikou. In general, his paintings, mostly oil on canvas, usually of great dimensions, abound with historic references drawn from the broad spectrum of Greek civilization. Among his most remarkable and breathtaking creations, are the huge allegories that recapture vividly and convincingly some of the glorious moments of our history, such as "Alexander the Great in Gavgamila", "Thermopylae" and the two great paintings, "The naval battle of Artemision" and "The Fall of Constantinople", presented  in this exhibition. These canvases instantly impress and captivate the viewer with the extraordinary artistry and mastery of their compositions. His work, rich in didactic content and expressed by a fine-drawn expressionism, appeals directly by its thematic wealth conceived through a profound personal vision.
The artist's subject matters are expanding on various periods that he refers to as "cycles" of his work, such as Greek Mythology and Ancient History, Byzantine-Middle Ages, including Biblical sources, especially The Revelation of St. John, as well as the    Allegoric-Paganistic Cycle and the Romantic Cycle.
The fury of World War II literally devastated Greece from end to end. Nevertheless, while the traces of the terrible catastrophe still lay littered all around us, we discern with admiration and surprise Greek art, like a Phoenix rising from its ashes, rally and recover in no time, entering a period of astounding flourish. New ideas, new forces, new initiatives, mark this post-war period, confirming the popular belief that Greece never really dies. The epic work of Iannis Nikou fully confirms this conviction.
I recall the well known English historian Arnold Toynbee once telling me that civilization constitutes a current, a movement and not a permanent condition. It is not a harbour, but rather a long journey. This flow, however, this movement, this journey, requires constant enrichment in order to survive. And its survival is mainly sustained by the bountiful contribution of art. This was also the point Melina Merkouri always made, by asserting that the heavy industry of a nation nowadays is not its factories, but its art and civilization. In this sense, the multiple and essential artistic input of Iannis Nikou to Greek civilization is remarkable and unique.
In general it can be said that the entire dynamic and diversified expressive power of Iannis Nikou reveals almost like in a cinematic reel, a tragic and tormented humanity, violently chained to an inexorable destiny where everything is at stake in a relentless battle between death and survival. It is of interest to note that in his latest works, the artist expands this merciless human destiny so as to also include dramatic events of our times, such as the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York on September 11, 2001. The inexhaustible imagination of the artist also serves as an enticement to a gentle initiation to an infernal world of mystery that hovers between Heaven and Hell.
Iannis Nikou is also a master of design. The impressive aesthetic success of his major canvases is due to the fact that all of them, as he himself reveals, are based upon a previously carefully executed design that secures the harmonic balance of the different entities into a well-appointed whole, revealing thus the artistic dexterity of a multi-dimensional and ingenious creator. The careful design of his creations also solves the difficulty of balancing the coexistence of a microcosm with a macrocosm in his multi-dimensional compositions.

It has been said that "it is certain that those who refer themselves to History will be heard and judged by History itself". I am certain that History has already judged and recognized the imposing out put of Iannis Nikou, who has proved himself a true Greek of our times. His artistic prowess is indissolubly tied, body and soul, to our history and civilization. As a consequence, the entity of his work is permeated by a refined spirit of Hellenism,that establishes him as the unquestionable artistic historian of our area, a real contemporary Thucydides. And just as this world-famous historian once declared, art requires a great deal of courage, physical, physiological, sentimental and above all an unshakable self-confidence. Iannis Nikou has already fully proven that he possesses abundant artistic power, not only for the present but for the future as well. For it is absolutely evident, that the innovative work of this epic artistic will easily survive time and memory.