DIMITRIS PIKIONIS (1887-1968)

Autobiograpical Notes

[From Dimitris Pikionis, Architect 1887-1968 'A Sentimental Topography', Architectural Association, London.]

'Who by setting us on the road
Made this a valid law-
That men must learn by suffering
Aeschylus, The Agamemnon'


I was born in Piraeus in 1887. My parents came from Chios; my mother and the mother of the poet Lambros Porphyras were sisters, nées Syriotis. I received both my elementary and secondary schooling in Piraeus, Anybody who realises how important it is for a child to spend his early, formative years near a brilliant tutor, like the dearly remembered Iakovos Dragatis, who had something of the ancient seer about him, will understand why his pupils have kept his memory alive in their hearts throughout their adult years.

Before I go any further, I hope I may be allowed to devote a few lines to the sacred memory of my parents, for it is from our parents that our being takes root and grows to maturity.

From an early age my father, the son of a sea captain, had shown an inclination for painting. From his own accounts, I learned that he was barely sixteen years old when he painted the sea battle that took place in 1868 off the harbour of Syros between the flagship of Hobart Pasha and our own 'Enosis'. I also learned that the British Consul in Piraeus had sent this picture to the New York 'Daily Mail'. When we went walking along the waterfront on Sundays with my uncle Syriotis and my cousins, my father would always stop in front of a fine ship and draw our attention to the beauty of its lines. Frequently, too, he would stop in front of a house and explain why its proportions would be much improved if, for instance, it were a few inches taller. It was through my father that I became familiar with vernacular architectural terms such as 'garbos' (gracefulness, style) and 'houi' (adeptness, particularity)(1).

As for my mother, she had an unusual nobility of character. Extremely sensitive, compassionate and responsive to other people's misfortunes, she was also stern, just, upright and unselfish, and always passionately concerned with the welfare of Greece.

It is these inherited moral and artistic propensities that I keep discovering in my own character, sometimes coexisting in balanced unison, sometimes opposed in agonising conflict.

I had the rare privilege of having a cousin who was a poet. It was from his mouth that I first heard the songs of our people, the poems of Solomos and others. He opened up a magical world before my childish eyes. For this I owe him everlasting love and gratitude. I also feel obliged to mention Nirvanas, Labelette, Melas and the painter Miliadis, who have always proved true friends to me. Finally, I should also like to mention my fellow students, in particular Dimitris Botsaris, with whom I became bound in a pure and steadfast friendship.888

My inclination for painting became apparent at a very early age. As I think back, I discover that within the infant within the child's impulses, unformulated thoughts, weaknesses and strengths -all the essential aspects of his adult character, indeed his entire destiny. Already lie concealed. Although I know that I have no room for digression here, I feel I must dwell further upon my childhood, choosing rather to curtail my narrative of other things, not out of vanity, but out of the desire to illustrate-of necessity, taking myself as an example the importance of the spiritual seeds implanted in childhood.

I remember once holding a small clay horse that had disproportionately thick legs and saying to myself. 'Yes, the horse's legs are thick and ugly, but somehow I wouldn't like it to have thin legs. For some reason they have to be thick... these are the kind of legs a clay horse should have. Come to think of it, this is the way I would have them and no other.' Although fashioned by the mind of a child, this observation spoke of the truth, which the wise man knows --namely, that art is the proper application of mimesis to matter. There was another instance, when an uncle of mine, a plain, straightforward man, asked me to draw a donkey for him. I produced a picture, which won me much praise, yet I was left with the suspicion that for all its verisimilitude, it lacked the quality, which expressed the essence of a donkey. The lesson was not long in coming. 'Now let me draw a donkey for you', my uncle suggested, and I saw that his drawing, though less accomplished than mine, glowed with that very quality I had unconsciously sought-- the thing which 'annuls the judiciousness of the judicious and puts to shame the wisdom of the wise'. Indeed, is it not this manifestation, this revelation of a deeper reality that we strive towards, and hope for, and wait for all our lives as the reward of our labours?(2)

An inner voice kept telling me that we did not come into this world willingly, but to expiate some past offence. I once asked myself the question: "Am I pure?, but at the same time I wondered, "What do I know about purity How can I know its true meaning"? I was always being told that I must be good, and so I tried to be, but deep within me, I suspected that I was good simply out of weakness. Yet I did have a strong sense of justice, and there came a time when I fought hard for it, although torn between two of the people I loved most in the world --an experience that put my youthful feelings through the most arduous ordeal.

Children listen to secret, inner voices. They learn all the time, every minute and hour of the day, and always at the right time, as only children can learn when they are on their own. I sensed that each person requires a special upbringing, a special method of education adapted to their own particular inclinations, if they are to flourish. And yet we are compelled to march across the wide desert of a conventional education, which deadens souls without number. From an early age, I felt the need for a teacher who could read my thoughts and feelings and guide me on my way. Apart from my actual tutors, nature and friendship among my peers have also proved invaluable teachers to me.

My grandmother used to take my sister and me down to the headland of the Phreattys every day for a walk. We strolled over the jagged rocks where the sea breeze gently stirred the slender stalks of the wild plants that sprouted through the cracks; we wandered across the god-bearing soil that was littered with bits of broken pottery, picking our way between gaping wells which spoke to me of the ancient people who once dwelled in this land --my land. And thus I gradually formed an image in my mind of the spirit and the history of my land.

While still at school. I often took long walks exploring the Attic countryside. I would set off from Moschato, cross the olive grove, and finally reach the rocks on the Philopappus Hill and the Acropolis; or I would follow the banks of the Cephisus river until I came to the Sacred Way. Later on, another favourite walk was across the empty landscape that leads to Kaisariani. But who can adequately describe the impact of these sites upon a young man still enveloped in a 'magic mantle of poetry'?(3) How can I convey what these solitary wanderings meant to me, what joy filled my soul at the sight of the freshly ploughed soil in the vegetable gardens, steaming faintly under the fiery rays of the sun? O, this bliss of suddenly coming upon an unknown cliff; the joy of walking slowly through the sacred olive grove, the foothills of Athens, the rocks... the grottoes dotting the sides of Pallas Athena's rock and her noble temple... In the distance, the musical harmony of mountains and hills, and above it all the pure air, the brilliant light, the ineffable harmony of the twilight hours.

I finished secondary school in 1903 and found that I now had to choose a profession for myself. I could have gone to India, like my maternal uncles, where I would have become familiar with the art and philosophy of one of the world's greatest civilisations. But I let that rare opportunity pass me by. As on many other occasions in my life.
Something held me back and prevented me from taking the right course. Instead, in 1904, I enrolled at the Athens Technical University. I attended the same classes as Joseph Pestarinis, who became one of the best-known electrical engineers of our generation and one of my closest friends. In the Fine Arts building just opposite ours, Kantzikis, Bouzianis and De Chirico, among others, were engrossed in their own studies. I found Bouzianis too shy and rebarbative to be approached. He would not even tolerate my frequent and gratuitous visits to classroom No. 7, where he and the others worked. In contrast. De Chirico and I soon became close friends and we had endless discussions about painting and our future plans under the arcades of the Technical University. I also became acquainted with Kambouroglou and Periklis Yannopoulos. The former was an Athenian elder who looked as if he had stepped out of an ancient bas-relief. In his presence one had the impression that here was an indigenous, authentic inhabitant of this land, whereas all the rest of us were merely late settlers. As for Yannopoulos, everyone expected him to be something that, at that particular time, he could never become. Suffice it to say that he was the embodiment of the noblest, proudest type of Greek.

I met Parthenis in 1906. I first saw an exhibition of a dozen small paintings of his on wood (showing views of places such as the Sacred Way, Lycabettus Hill, the Acropolis, the Tower of the Winds, and the pine trees of Kaisariani). I found much beauty in the square framing, the precision of the drawing, the definition of tones, the extremely exact gradation of colour and I immediately asked to be introduced to him. Bearing a letter of recommendation from K. Michaelidis, the editor of the periodical "Panathenaea", I rang the doorbell of his studio behind the church of St Eleutherius. He answered the door, but only opened it part of the way, obstructing the entrance with his body. His bright eyes were fixed upon me; his expression was stern and haughty. Eventually he read my letter and allowed me in. I showed him some samples of my work, which he praised. He then asked me whether I had read any handbooks on the treatment of colour, and if I was familiar with the complementary colours. He advised me to trace the outlines of objects as accurately as possible, and to clearly define the various colour tones. On the walls, I noticed some paintings he had made of the monastery at Poros, and felt an unbridled admiration.

He asked me to come and see him again. From that day on, we met frequently, and I always accompanied him whenever he went out to paint in the open. I was happy - at last I had found the educator, the true teacher I needed for my art. I must have been his very first pupil.

It was Parthenis, assisted by Yannopoulos, who prevailed upon my father to allow me to study painting. In 1908, I left with my father for Munich, where we were welcomed by K. Hatzopoulos (a good friend of my cousin, the poet Porphyras) and his Finnish wife. I also met De Chirico again, just one month before he left for Italy. He showed me some of the copper engravings he had made at the Academy, and I showed him some of my drawings. I must note here that my adoration of Greek antiquity had led me to produce a number of figures drawn in charcoal on Ingres paper, which, upon being placed near a flame, became suffused with the delicate tinge of ancient marble. I had also drawn some heads in red chalk in an attempt to capture some of the melancholy quality of Scopas' work - that 'powerful breath of inner life, but also pathos', as the architectural historian Tsoundas once described it.

These drawings depicted venerable, bearded figures, with serene and austere brows furrowed by deep thought, as I wrote once.(4) While they had no great value as works of art, they showed the beloved idols which peopled my imagination. For me, they summed up the ideal image of our ancestors, as it had been slowly nurtured in the minds of our people; a mythical image of heroic generations who had once dwelled in 'palaces' erected in an infinitely remote age.

I read Aeschylus, and my eyes would fill with tears as I recalled 'the distant land of the Hellenes'. I often visited natural history museums and studied the structure of skeletons, which I saw as the remnants of some primordial architecture containing the laws, which governed all creation. The structure that ordered the spirals of the brain seemed to me a replica, a mirror-image of the principles, which shaped the nebulae and galaxies of the universe and held together the harmony of the constellations. I worked incessantly to improve my drawing and sculpture, but sensed that the course I had embarked upon was an extremely long and arduous one. A while later, I happened to meet Bouzianis again. This time we became the closest of friends, and met every evening for endless discussions on art.

Of the painters whose work I became familiar with at the time, I especially admired the toil of Hans von Marées. The figures of this descendant of ancient races were rooted in the soil, seeming to rise upwards as if balancing the burden of colour they were made to carry. In his hieratic old men, one could almost discern 'the precious ointment upon the hand, that ran down the beard, even Aaron's beard; that went down to the skirts of his garments'(6)

Three paintings by Cézanne, whose theory on the third dimension I was already familiar with, eventually led me to abandon Munich. This, I said to myself, is painting - true painting. And this is what drawing should be.

Paris (1909-1912). I shall not say anything about this city, where the unbroken historical continuity of tradition has created what Rodin defined as 'the patient and silent merging of individual thought with the labour of generations'. Nor shall I speak about the various teachings --moral, spiritual and artistic--, which may be extracted from this city and from the French race, provided that one is discerning enough to discover the secret virtues that he hidden underneath the surface.

Mastering the meaning of art necessitates profound thought and subtle, intuitive gifts, if the initiate is to penetrate, albeit gradually and painfully, into the sanctuary where the inner truth will finally be revealed. This was the path along which I slowly progressed, using all the strength that was within me. I experienced the most indescribable joy on hearing that Parthenis had arrived in Paris.' I have yet to meet a teacher who has taught me more than you', I told him, and he replied, smiling with secret satisfaction,' I don't doubt it'. I had the good fortune to visit in his company several museums and retrospective exhibitions of the French masters.

But as time went by, I began to grow impatient. I felt that the course I had chosen was a long one, much longer than my limited finances could possibly allow.

Knowing that I would inevitably face heavy debts on my return to Greece. I made the difficult decision to devote the rest of the year to architectural studies. I bought the necessary books and set out one day for my first session in an architectural studio. I feel no shame in mentioning this; it simply goes to show that the study of architecture was not in my nature; it was never among my central inclinations.

Architecture, as an object of aesthetic contemplation, had a certain attraction for me; I also gained a number of aesthetic and emotional insights through the study of spatial organisation and plastic composition whose ideal conclusion was the integration of a rhythm or symbol. However, this was quite a different matter from the complex theoretical approach towards construction involving materials and practical structural problems, and from the long apprenticeship that an architect has to go through. My readings from Guadet's "Eléments et théorie de l'architecture" not only helped me acquire a certain amount of knowledge on the subject, but also provided a kind of sentimental exploration of various times and places. Yet there were moments when I felt as if my spirit had become one of the innumerable, nameless stones buried in the deep foundations, the massive walls, the architraves and vaults of the buildings I contemplated.

I spent some time at Chifflot's studio, and could even say that my architectural apprenticeship earned me a fair amount of praise. I began to believe that I could embark upon my new course of action with a certain degree of confidence and courage. As for my other interests, I hoped that through my own studies I would gradually fill in the remaining gaps, and I was proved right.

The time was approaching for my return to Greece (early 1912), and my last month in Paris had begun, when something of great importance happened to me. I was riding in a bus past the Place de la Concorde on my way back to the hotel in the Latin Quarter when De Chirico got on and sat in the seat right opposite mine. We greeted each other warmly, and straight away he said that the ascribed a deep significance to apparently chance encounters such as this - a metaphysical significance not unlike that which the ancient Greeks found in their omens... He mentioned Arnold Bocklin, saying he was the only true metaphysical painter, as Nietzsche had also observed. I replied that the universal theories and ideals relating to art were of primary importance, of course, but that the valid symbolic expression of these ideals through the medium of art was equally important. De Chirico went on to say that one autumn day, under a limpid sky, he went into an antique shop by some bubbling fountains and discovered the text of Nietzsche's theory of the eternal return; an enigmatic concept of the cosmos which he later found corroborated in Heraclitus. These things had inspired a new series of works, which he invited me to his house to see. I was thus the first artist in Paris he showed them to. There was a self-portrait in which he had used a technique which could immediately be seen as the only appropriate one for conveying this ideal; such was its simplicity, its restraint, its direct relevance to the eternal, transcending all ephemeral elements. In it, the artist wore black and was deeply immersed in the contemplation of his inner visions. He stood in an opening against a cold, translucent, greenish-blue sky. At the bottom of the picture was the inscription:


QUID AMABO NISI QUOD AENIGMA EST.

In some of his other works, the delicate line that separated light from shade on rain-drenched soil was equally mysterious. In one, there was a tall building with a clock telling the time. I also remember a picture in which the half-glimpsed mast of a ship conveyed the mystery of departure, exile... heavily marked by the shadow of destiny. Enigmatic, too, the vaults and arcades, the statue of Ariadne touched by the autumn light. All the paintings had the same limpid autumn sky.

'Latin is the language that can best express these mysteries', De Chirico said. 'And the same is true of Roman architecture. Rome is the true home of the mysteries...' A few days later, I received a letter from him, written in Greek. It began:

'Honoured Friend, I feel the need to see you and talk to you, because something entirely new has happened in my life'.

I am not able to register in detail here my reaction to this letter, but after that, we met several times, and spent many hours discussing the new light that his metaphysical theory shed upon life. I even postponed my departure from Paris for a while. When my last evening came, I had dinner with the artist and his mother. Reality struck me as insignificant and vulgar in the apocalyptic light of his exalted theory.

At last the enigmatic time of parting came for us, too. I left Paris the next day.

As the boat reached the port of Patra, my eyes were struck by the cold, dazzling whiteness of a piece of marble lying in the mud. Such was its impact against the things surrounding it that I thought: 'Now I will have to revise everything I have learned up till now'.

In Piraeus one day, as I was returning to my father's house, I was intensely aware of the sun scorching my skin; then I stepped into the shade and the coolness caused me to shiver... It occurred to me at that moment that the violent contrasts in the climate of our land, experienced over many centuries, probably helped to explain the sharp antitheses in the character of our race. The ancient Greeks, I considered, had subjected these antitheses to the discipline of their cornices, friezes and architraves. Two days later, among the slums of a working-class quarter of Piraeus, I came upon the actual embodiment of this kind of antithesis: the acute angle made by a lean-to roof at the point where it met the wall behind it. These observations led me to abandon conventional learning and follow a free, autonomous course dictated by nature. Ever since then, the need for combining what the poet Solomos defines as 'il commune' and 'il proprio' became my most persistent pursuit.

1912-1920. My real friendships --friendships of the spirit-- all date back to this period, which was marked by war campaigns, troop mobilisation and military disasters. These included Alibertis, Bournias, Apostolakis and, at a later date, the Politis family. It was around this time that Apostolakis' book 'Criticism and Poetry' was first published. Let us linger with reverence on Apostolakis. He has been called a negative spirit, but where did his bitter, agonising nihilism originate if not in his soul's deep yearning for poetry, in his noble concept of the nature of art? His spiritual impact on all of us was considerable; he bestowed on us the greatest benefits that man can give his fellow man. And then there were the others: Kondoglou and Papaloukas, the architect Mitsakis, the poet Stratis Doukas, Velmos; and the younger generation of Ghikas, Tsarouchis, Engonopoulos, Diamandopoulos. How fruitful and instructive it was to experience at close quarters the interplay of contrasting attitudes and values, which these men represented. I have no idea what I might have offered them in return, but I am fully conscious of my debt to each one of them.

However, I would now like to recall the brief and rare intervals when I was able to enjoy a certain degree of isolation and devote myself to painting. I went alone to the island of Aegina, in the blissful state of one who has been granted the privilege of 'returning to the godhead', even though this bliss was tinged with the bitterness of an uncertain future.

But let me quote here some half-effaced lines which I wrote in those days: "Olive tree, are you the sacred tree? Is it you men spoke of in times long past as being invested with the purest essence, the very essence of light? Tell me, why is your holy trunk so sorely tormented? Are these contortions perhaps the outward signs of your striving towards the spiritual principle, of which you are the living incarnation? ...Are you the vine mentioned in the Scriptures? I kneel and kiss the soil that nourishes you. See, it is furrowed and cracked by the flame of the sun... But you transmute the flame into a divine breath of coolness..."

For a long time I used to go and paint on the banks of the Cephisus river, down by Sepolia, in the pine grove that was part of the Soutsos estate. I wanted to put into practice all the theory I had learned from Cézanne's technique. I wanted to work out for myself the visual revolution he had brought about, the shift from the established technique of his age to the new third dimension, achieved through colour, the quest for pure chromatic antithesis.

Every day I made imperceptible progress until I was able to render this third dimension in a fairly satisfactory way. I was reminded of the painter Lytras, who compared talent to a 'small brook which suddenly disappears into the ground, but soon re-emerges and gushes forth forcefully'. Then I realised that it is one thing to grasp a technical principle with one's reason, and another thing entirely to know how to put it into effect. This musical technique, if I may call it such, with its intensely dramatic character, both attracted and delighted me. I like painting in solitude, not only because one is often unwilling to expose one's weaknesses to others, but because art is for me a religious act, an act of veneration and worship of Mother Nature, whose sanctity may be offended by the ignorance of the multitude. This is why I usually went to the pine grove alone; it was my sanctuary. If I went with someone, it was with Steris, who felt the same as I did and fully respected those moments of religious dedication.

One day a German professor of music at the Athens Conservatory saw us at work and remarked to a mutual friend: 'I saw two artists in the pine grove, and I suddenly felt the urge to play my cello to them'. Since then, I have always associated some colours --greens, crimsons-- with the deeper tones of music.

Art is obedient to the eternal laws of the universe. Leafing through my papers, I came upon a prose poem called 'PIETY' which begins like this:

"You have set down ubiquitous laws, O Lord, suffer me to
follow them, suffer me not to make them profane".

It was written long ago. May the reader forgive its clumsiness? I built my first house in 1923. It was in the Tzitzifies quarter, on the left bank of the Ilyssus river. Fotos Politis praised it in three articles in the Athens daily "Politia".

The second house I built (1925) was at No. 1 Heracleiou Street, in the Patissia district. It was inspired by Orlando's painting of an ancient house in Priene. When I first saw that painting, I said to myself: 'This is a pure, essentially Greek house, free of any elements indicative of a specific time or place'. The square windows, the oblong openings serving as supports and lintels, the absence of a cornice - all these devices were closely related to contemporary architectural solutions, but they were also to be found in our own vernacular traditions. When I became familiar with the Modern Movement, I felt instinctively close to it. If the more perceptive minds among us accepted and embraced the Modern Movement at that time, it was for the following reasons: it promised to become the embodiment of organic truth; it was austere, and fundamentally simple; it was governed by a geometry that conveyed a universal design capable of symbolising our age.

The Lycabettus School was built in 1933, but as soon as it was completed, I found it did not satisfy me. It occurred to me then that the universal spirit had to be coupled with the spirit of nationhood; and this led me to make buildings like the Experimental School in Thessaloniki (1935), the apartment block on Heyden Street, Athens (1938) --for which Mitsakis produced the floor plan-- and the house for the sculptress Frosso Efthimiadi (1949).

My later work, on which I collaborated with my son-in-law, Alexandros Papayeorgiou, was also influenced by these tendencies: this included the house in Filothei (1941), the Xenia Hotel in Delphi (1955), the Aixoni housing project and the pavilion at St Demetrius Loumbardiaris on the Philopappus Hill (1957).

My only reason for listing these works is to indicate to any critic, who cares to examine them that they represent a continuous, determined effort to further elaborate the very ideal I had conceived right at the beginning of my adult life. This is only natural, since the principles upon which these works are based are immutable. There is no point whatever in writing of them, because I have frequently reiterated them. I have restated them only to deepen and enrich their meaning, both for my own and for other people's sake. As far as I am concerned, however, I never really felt as though I was repeating myself; rather, I had the impression that I was rediscovering these fundamental principles all over again. If there are any errors in the works I have produced, it is due to my own mistaken interpretation and not to any faults in the principles themselves.

I feel, however, that I cannot conclude this piece without mentioning one final point: my self-training in the technique of Cézanne led me away from the ideals of the Western world. The East and Byzantium revealed to me that the creation of a symbolic idiom abstracted from nature and from the material of mimesis is the only valid and spiritually worthwhile way to convey our feelings about life.

Somebody once said, quite rightly, that the whole future course of Hellenism would depend on our ability to assume a responsible position at the place where the East and the West meet. I will add this: it will also depend on the appropriate synthesis of opposed currents and tendencies, on their fusion into a new form. I could easily analyse the implications of this for architecture, but let it suffice here for me to say that I am a confirmed Easterner.

Looking back on what I have written here about my life, I contemplate and I, like the poet Cavafy, read 'the inscription on this ancient stone', with its 'badly mutilated' letters, desires and hopes, joy and grief, and I am filled with wonder and admiration at how many tears, then 'tears again', men 'of mortal body and immortal soul' are destined to shed before they can achieve spiritual fulfilment. These 'foul, unceasing' sufferings gradually fashion his spiritual being, in time permeating his works with a mysticism like the 'morning breeze'...

Young people, discard individual will and descend into the trough of obedience. This, and this alone, will grant you true freedom. Do not slacken or lie idle, for it is written that we may eventually be forgiven for not having been able to accomplish something, but never forgiven for not having tried.