Nonda - 1990's The Final Works

1990's The Final Works

In the early 1990’s Nonda made an initial return to darker colors. A large grey canvas entitled “The Monsters” was begun in Paris and reworked for some years. “I am battling with monsters” said Nonda and in some ways this struggle is reflected in these ominous and troubled forms. Haunted by depression and the first signs of his long struggle with Alzheimer’s, his work process slowed considerably and he was disturbed by unsettling visions. Oddly, in a sudden rejection of this Manichean outlook, his last paintings were a bright series of fish on blue backgrounds. He was very exited by this return to his figurative origins and made numerous trips to the fish market in Athens to buy “models”. In the 1950’s he had painted many fish, sometimes “on-site” in the fish market in Les Halles and it is a theme that remained as constant as the female figure in his life’s oeuvre.

The unfortunate exhibition in Kolonaki was to be the last he would himself oversee. In 2003, on the occasion of the artist’s 80th year, his family, with the support of the City of Athens and the French Embassy, organized a partial retrospective of his paintings from the period of 1955-1975. Many large scale works, as well as the giant canvas, Hommage a Villon, were sent from Paris and seen for the first time in Greece. At the time of the exhibit in 2003, Nonda was too ill to attend. The success of the exhibition was such, that in 2004, the city transported the same exhibition to the ancient fortress of Amochostou in Lefkosia, Cyprus, as the symbolic opening of a series of events planned to celebrate Cyprus’ entrance into the European Union. Nonda died at 83 in October of 2005 at his home in Athens.

Fifty-three years after his first exhibition in Athens, the 2006 retrospective held at the New Benaki Museum marked the first large-scale retrospective of his work in Greece, as well as a symbolic return to the city of his birth. Hailed as one of Paris’ most vibrant artists in the fifties and sixties, his career spans a sixty year arc across the latter half of the 20th century