ATHINA SHINA (2024)
With good order and harmonisation
Nikoletta Antonopoulou is an experienced and established artist whose works function – apart from their particularly interesting aesthetic parameter – on many more levels beyond the primary one which impresses the eye of the beholder.
The artist chooses subjects from nature and life, given that it is their collocation to which she attempts to draw attention. Nature gives birth to life and life to nature, in association and harmonisation, shaping in her works bridges between phenomena and situations or causalities where the rules are frequently enriched by fruitful exceptions. Through the exceptions, which involve resourcefulness and qualitative transcendences, Nikoletta Antonopoulou has a way of revealing to those who view her works – always with naturalness and directness – the sense of rhythm, the formulation of interaction and co-ordination, as well as the joyousness of everyday life – an everyday life which reconciles the antitheses as it brings to the surface from the depths of each of her artistic compositions the dynamism of certain moments of elation reminiscent of little ‘miracles’ which we imperceptibly experience without, in reality, being quick enough to observe them.
The idiom of the artist’s ‘style’ is expressionistic, combined with realistic features of the subjects, which she usually draws from the world of the docking of sea-going craft and, more generally, from the field of contests and friendly competition. In the reality of ancient Greece, the word ‘agon’ described, at one and the same time, three different things, as we perceive them today. At an earlier date, ‘agon’, at least as we encounter it in the Funeral Oration of Pericles, meant, simultaneously, place, manner, and procedure. It is perhaps from those years that the inspiration of Nikoletta Antonopoulou is derived, as she wishes to bring to life, by her own contemporary artistic means, the alertness of consciousness, the symbolisms, and the multiplicity of this concept of noble engagement in an agon.
The design in the artist’s works is exceptional, as it centres upon the rendering of only the necessary features – moving forms, sometimes pulsating and sometimes vibrating – since the movement stems from the alertness of the whole body of each figure, which is co-ordinated both with the one next to it and with the ‘contestants’ as a whole. Her colours, however, are laid out, on the one hand, with an inner control and, on the other, with a spontaneous gesture, as these are regulated by this gifted artist on the basis of their tonicities and antitheses.
Even if you see the works of Nikoletta Antonopoulou only once, you have the impression that they are familiar to you, though they remain always unknown, as they attract the viewers to discover – depending on their disposition – a different implication of them at every glance. These are works which convey light and rhythmically fluctuating tensions, a breath and force of life, joy and hope –for individual and collective accomplishments: accomplishments which require principles and altruism, concord and sound principles, stimulation of memory, and inner discipline, as well as co-operation and team spirit, with rules and skills. These are virtues of which the artist reminds us with truths and nostalgias, with longings and allegories, but also with contemporary artistic methods and insights. In any event, it was by means of similar parameters that our multi-level tradition took shape, and these enduring values of hers are still alive and life-giving with us, cultivating within us the need to strive (in the arenas of life) with awareness and humanity, as our broadening horizons and, above all, the critical times we are living through demand of us.
Athena Schina
Historian of Art & Theory of Culture (National & Kapodistrian University of Athens)
VASSOS KOUNTOURIDIS 1992
It had been a pleasure for me to follow closely the work of Nikoletta Antonopoulou in the field of the Fine Arts right from her early steps. Noticing her not only in the steady progress achieved by attending the aesthetic guests of true expressionism but also in the deployment of her subjects. It is in her guest to grasp and depict the motion. And where else could she find it alive, intense and dynamic? Beyond any doubt, in the races, in soccer, in motorcycles, in bicycles, etc. With robust strokes and free motions when she feels, she can depict the instantaneus grasp efficaciously. The harmony in colour and style denotes knowledge of design and adjustment of composition. Her expressionism is imbued with instructive and prudent impulse. It extends within the bounds of truestates because it can keep a balance between the spirit and the hand. And her spirit is free of pain, anguish, depression, agony. On the contrary you can perceive hilarity, power. It is aiming at a successful life. Victory is attained by means of a noble spirit of meulation and practice in the strife. Using these fundamental and innate weapons she will push herself creatively in the field of the Fine Arts.
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DORA ILIOPOULOU-ROGAN (1996)
Motion, colour, light: Τhe fundamental – from the beginning of her career consolidated – characteristics of the figurative writing of Nikoletta Antonopoulou are at her works orchestrated in the sailing boats and in Wind Surfers. The dynamic, evermoving, full of “flame” writing of the creator, writing that has impressed repeatedly through motion, “direction” and the in general bearing of the runners, the cyclists, the footballers, the motorcyclists, the riders, in brief the athletes, is characterized by a new climax to her sailing ships. Creative pretext for a genuine, spontaneous, instictive, vital creation, each boat appears self-reliantly and simultaneously inseparable member of a multidynamic composition. Presence above all “poetical”, each boat stands the visible core – transmitter and receiver – of an invisible but always existing cosmogony, that supports it and fixes it in colour, rhythm, motion. Vibratingly given through the exaltation – feast – of colour, the sailing boats, are materialized – projected – through the characteristic mirages of sea and sky. Eloquent elements – elements of a procedure that exceeds by far the happenings in this world. Phantasmagorical presences the boats here, in the departure or “in the course of fight”, submit coherences that exceeding by far the particular stimulus concern the same destiny.
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ATHINA SHINA (1999)
The significance of exercising, real and figurative, constituted the starting line of inspiration for the creation of the work of Nikoletta Antonopoulou. The expressionistic elements of the design, which impress the gestures of writing and figurative attribution of her each subject, are accompanied by the intensities of colour that they transmit action, motion, pulse and liveliness. The directness and the verisimilarity activate and intensify the activism of the figures, in these works, that are inspired by the whole manipulation of Nikoletta Antonopoulou, relatively to the atmosphere that cultivates to the spectator, submitting to him, through the sports eg. of riding, sailing etc. the permanent vigilance that life demands, as well as the permanent exercise of awareness that art demands.
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PEGGY KOUNENAKI (2003)
Basic characteristic of her work, her attempt to conceive the movement of the bodies of the athletes and the sentiments that are impressed to their faces the moment of the ultimate effort. Her compositions, that are determined by the awareness of space and design, the balance of organisation, succeed in attributing the atmosphere of the athletic spaces, the intensity of the athletic body, the expression of the face, the spirit of rivalry. Effects from impressionism, expressionism and american post-war art are realised in her painting work. What dominates in her works, which are usually presented in thematic units, is motion and action, that are impressed mainly to the bodies and the faces of the athletes that she portrays in her paintings. Elements that are attributed in expressionistic disposition, fast, free and dynamic stroke, plasticity and intense chromatic gradations.
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