Decorazon Gallery is proud to showcase two living painting legends from Greece & Cyprus. The gallery is located at 417 N. Bishop Ave. in the Historic Bishop Arts District. For more information, call 214-946-1003 or visit www.decorazongallery.com.

Konstantinos Zannetos
Step by Step
Curated by: Panos Dimitropoulos + Iasonas Kontovrakis

Bill Komodore
Arcadia - The Recent Paintings

Opening reception:
Saturday, February 13, 6 - 9:30 p.m.

Exhibition on view Feb. 13 - March 9

KONSTANTINOS ZANNETOS
Born in Nicosia, Cyprus, in 1981, Konstantinos Zannetos attended painting lessons from an early age. In 2002, Zannetos began formal studies at the Athens School of Fine Arts, where he studied under Professor Zacharias Arvantis, and graduated cum laude in 2007. Since completing his degree, Zannetos has been preparing work for solo exhibitions and exploring his interest in flight-of-the-imagination theatrical scenery. His first scenography work in theater brought fantasy to life in the production "The Life and Work of Toulouse Lautrec - The Fantasy of Cine," directed by Cristophoros Christofis, in 2009. (Konstantinos Zannetos - Fairy Tale - 118x98 inches - oil on canvas + gold leaf)

Many of Konstantinos Zannetos' paintings can be found in private collections in Cyprus, Greece, Poland, Austria, France and the USA. He has exhibited at the Cyprus House in New York City (2008), The Aerides Gallery, Athens, Greece (2008), Little Gallery, Nowy Sacz, Poland (2008), the Lanitis Foundation, Linassol, Cyprus (2009), and also in 2009, won second place at the Champis Tsaggaris Foundation for etching. And already this year (2010), the Cyprus National Gallery purchased a painting for their permanent collection.

Zannetos' paintings, much like the world of ancient Greek mythology, employ allegoric characters in theatrical scenes, creating a unique atmosphere that transcend time and place. His artwork can be characterized as a combination of mathematics and poetry; a research of the relationship between movement, space, and time. Konstantinos Zannetos currently resides in Nicosia, Cyprus.

BILL KOMODORE
Bill Komodore was born in Athens, Greece in 1932. Komodore eventually moved to the United States and received his formal education at Tulane University, where his professors included George Rickey, Mark Rothko and David Smith. He earned his B.A. in 1955, and M.F.A. in 1957. (Bill Komodore - Pig Wearing Lipstick - 31x35 - Oil on linen)

Today Komodore resides in Dallas, Texas, with his wife Shannon, and teaches at the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University (SMU) where he is a professor of Painting. He is represented in numerous public and private collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Walker Art Center; Dallas Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; El Paso Museum of Art, El Paso; Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio; Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi; Amarillo Museum of Art; Des Moines Art Center; Hamilton Gallery of Art, Ontario, Canada; Milwaukee Museum of Art, Minneapolis; The Barrett Collection, Dallas; Pegasus Solutions, Scottsdale, Arizona; Edmund Pillsbury, Dallas; Bertrand Russell Library, London; Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

In a recent art review by Lucia Simek, she writes, "Mr. Komodore is playing both with the mythical idea of Arcadia as a place of creative perception and with the experience of being a native of the actual Arcadia, Greece, which he describes as "the bucolic land of shepherds, beautiful nymphs, and satyrs." In a series of paintings in which white paint has been actively scratched to reveal colored surfaces beneath, the white paint acts like a metaphorical fog, with images carved into it that are scratchy, childlike rendering of disparate things... Because of this, Mr. Komodore doesn't give precedence to the image he carves in the surface, but suggests through the process of layering paint that it is only within a deep framework of experience and catalog that particular images are born."

Bill Komodore is also a leading authority of nineteenth-century pottery of the south, specializing in the pottery of Texas. Since 1987, he has independently studied and collected pottery, including ongoing work on an index of early Texas potters. Perhaps his immense appreciation of that art form derives from the fact that as a child, he survived the Second World War bombing of Athens by hiding in large water jugs. Some have often referred to Bill Komodore as an "artist/ poet-warrior."

"Common events, uncommonly revealed, have been my lifelong pursuit in painting. These include memories, observations on relationships and nature, musings on world affairs, meditations on myths, religion and the transience of time. Sometimes, the events are uncommon, and these, I like to show in the simplest manner possible. I am very thankful to my work, for it has taught me a lot."                                 
                                                              -- Bill Komodore, 2010