s ’ d a m o N A l Finds Sou ome in a H reece G One of the great spirits of the postwar art world, John Craxton is finally gaining the attention that all his life he ran away from. He scorned the art world and all that came with it – exhibitions, reviews, the glamourous openings. Ranbir Singh Sidhu wonders how Craxton would have reacted to the travelling exhibition curated by his biographer, Ian Collins – currently on at the Benaki Museum until October 2022, when it will travel to his beloved Chania, and then London in 2023.
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t’s hard to deny that there’s something essentially unfathomable about Greece that delights the natural born nomad’s soul, and the British painter John Craxton was no exception. Finally deserting the ill-lit and icy drawing rooms of post-war Britain, Craxton first arrived in Greece in 1946, aged 23, unsure what he was looking for or what he would find. He was already known for dark-hued, brooding landscapes of rural England, works that suggested a land locked in permanent wintertime, yet whose playfulness with perspective and subject matter, at times bordering on the fantastical, would become hallmarks of his later, mature style. All of this is on display at his first career-spanning exhibition John Craxton: A Greek Soul, currently at the Benaki Museum in Athens, designed by Natalia Boura and curated by Craxton’s biographer, Ian Collins. Born in a Bohemian, and musical, family Craxton seemed to have decided early he wasn’t going to follow anyone’s rules, not in art and not in life. He famously bragged later that the only exam he ever took was his motorcycle driving test. Friends said he was wedded to his motorbike, and when the Michael Cacoyannis movie Zorba the Greek was filmed in and around athens insider | 40 |
