Giannoulis Chalepas

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Portrait of Giannoulis Chalepas by Nikiforos Lytras
Giannoulis Chalepa's most famous work The Sleeping Woman . Grave of Sophia Afentaki in the Athens Memorial Cemetery .

Giannoulis Chalepas ( Greek Γιαννούλης Χαλεπάς , * August 14, 1851 in Pyrgos on Tinos ; † September 15, 1938 in Athens ), also Halepas, was one of the greatest Greek sculptors.

Life and works

Chalepas came from a well-known family of marble sculptors from the island of Tinos. His father Johannes and his uncle ran a sculpture company with branches in Bucharest , Smyrna and Piraeus . Giannoulis was the eldest of the family's five sons. He showed an interest in sculpture from an early age and helped his father with his work. His parents initially envisaged him for the profession of merchant, but Chalepas decided to become a sculptor.

From 1869 to 1872 Chalepas studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts as a student of Leonidas Drosis . In 1873 he continued his studies in Munich with a grant from the Panhellenic Institute of the Annunciation of Mary of Tinos. In Munich Chalepas became a student of Max von Windemann . During his stay in Munich, he presented the works The fairy tale of the beautiful and the satyr who plays with Eros . Both works received excellent reviews and were recognized. In 1875 Chalepas exhibited the work Satyr, who plays with Eros, together with the relief Tenderness at the Athens Art Exhibition.

In 1876 Chalepas finally returned to Greece and opened a studio in Athens. The following year, he began work on his most famous work, Die Schlafende . This is a grave sculpture for the grave of Sophia Afentaki First Athens Cemetery .

Woman's head (Florina Museum of Modern Art)

In the winter of 1877/78, for no apparent reason, Chalepas suffered a nervous breakdown and began to destroy his works. He also tried repeatedly to take his own life. The reason for his mental illness lay in a pathological urge for perfectionism, exhaustion from non-stop work and a disappointed love for a woman from Tinos, for whose hand he had asked in vain. At the time, psychiatric science was not yet well developed and doctors could not cure the underlying causes of his illness. On the advice of the doctors, his parents sent him to Italy to recover . But this therapy had only temporary success. With his return to Greece the symptoms of the illness started again: immersion in silence, isolation, senseless laughter. As his condition continued to deteriorate, doctors diagnosed Chalepas with mental illness in 1888. His family took him to a psychiatric hospital in Corfu . In psychiatry he was not allowed to draw or shape because this was the cause of his illness. Works that he hid in his closet were taken away and destroyed. Of the few works that he produced during this time, only one has survived, which an overseer had deposited in the basement of the psychiatry and which was discovered by chance in 1942.

In 1901 Chalepa's father died. A year later his mother brought him to Tinos. There he lived under the strict supervision of his mother, who assumed that art had driven her son crazy. Because of this, she did not allow him to engage in sculpture. She even destroyed drafts. When his mother died in 1916, Chalepas no longer had any relation to art. He lived impoverished as a shepherd and was stigmatized as a madman in the village. Nonetheless, he found the strength to deal with sculpture again. The means at his disposal were extremely primitive, but he tried diligently to win back the lost years of art.

In 1923 the Athens professor of sculpture Thomas Thomopoulos , an admirer of Chalepas, made plaster casts of his works and presented them in an exhibition at the Academy of Athens in 1925 . Just two years later, Chalepa's works were awarded the highest Greek art prize. His great talent as a born sculptor and the reputation of the crazy artist who recovered quickly made him known as a kind of second van Gogh or Rodin . Another exhibition of his works followed in 1928.

Due to the persistence of one of his nieces, he moved to Athens in 1930. He spent the last years of his life in his family circle. He remained creative until his death. Chalepas died on September 15, 1938.

Chalepas was an artist between genius and madness and one of the most outstanding figures in Greek art history. His works, around 150 of which have survived, are mainly classified as Classical art. They are characterized by a great expressiveness of their faces and bodies. In this respect they are in no way inferior to the works of a Rodin .

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personal data
SURNAME Chalepas, Giannoulis
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Halepas, Giannoulis; Χαλεπάς, Γιαννούλης (Greek)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Greek sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH August 14, 1851
PLACE OF BIRTH Pyrgos on Tinos
DATE OF DEATH September 15, 1938
Place of death Athens