1. Stass Paraskos: art and politics

2. Stass Paraskos Born in the village of Anaphotia near the town of Larnaca in Cyprus in 1933. His family were very poor peasant farmers. Stass’s parents and brothers as children in the 1930s

3. Stass Paraskos The Shepherd 1964 Scenes of his life as a child looking after his family’s flock of sheep and goats in Cyprus often appeared in his paintings.

4. Between 1878 and 1960 Cyprus was a British colony and so in 1953 Stass travelled to Britain in search of a better life. He had no thoughts of being an artist at this time.

5. Arriving in London with no money he quickly got a job washing dishes at the ABC Tearoom in Tottenham Court Road. In 1957 he moved to Leeds in northern England, where he and his brothers opened the first Greek restaurant in the city, the oddly named Montevideo.

6. The Montevideo was popular with students and tutors from the nearby Leeds College of Art, one of the most progressive and radical art schools in the world in the 1950s and 60s. One of these regular visitors was the Head of Fine Art at the art school, Harry Thubron. Thubron decided it would be a good idea for Stass to join the art school as a student, even though Stass had no university entrance qualifications. He had not even completed school in Cyprus due to his family’s poverty. Why Thubron decided Stass should become an artist is still a mystery. Perhaps it was just a radical thing to do in the 1950s and 60s - invite someone with no background or qualifications in art to study art. Stass said, ‘It was like entering paradise for me studying at Leeds.’ Above: Leeds College of Art Left: Harry Thubron

7. Stass Paraskos Figure Study 1959

8. It was at Leeds College of Art that Stass found his distinctive style of painting and made friends with some of the most significant international artists of the post-war period.

9. One of those artists was the abstract painter Terry Frost, who persuaded Stass to join him in St Ives in Cornwall in the south West of England. Terry Frost Orange and Black Leeds 1957

10. St Ives was a well known artists’ colony, with artists such as Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson working there. Stass shared a studio with the abstract painter Wilhelmina Barns-Graham. Stass Paraskos St Ives 1959

11. Stass Paraskos Still Life with Vase 1960 Stass Paraskos Still Life with Skull 1960

12. Stass Paraskos Portrait of Carol and Robin Page 1966 Now his friendships in Leeds became more radical as Stass became close to avant-garde performance artists such as Robin Page.

13. Robin Page Standing On My Own Head (film still) 1972 Page was a key figure in the development of art happenings, street art and performance as art. He began as a painter but moved into performance and street art in the revolutionary artistic atmosphere in British art schools in the 1960s. For Page it was the freedom to experiment he found at Leeds College of Art in the 1960s that was important.

14. In 1966 he staged the street art happening Merry Christmas ’66. Intended to he staged on the steps of Leeds Town Hall on Christmas Day 1966, the performance had to be moved inside Leeds College of Art after the police objected to Page lying naked in a public space. Leeds Town Hall at that time was also the local police headquarters. Robin Page Merry Christmas ‘66 1966

15. Robin Page Merry Christmas ‘66 1966

16. Earlier in 1966 Page orchestrated a police raid on Stass’s first solo exhibition also held at Leeds College of Art. It was a show called Lovers and Romances. Stass Paraskos Exhibition catalogue to the exhibition ‘Lovers and Romances’ held at Leeds College of Art (Leeds Institute Gallery) 1966

17. Stass Paraskos (left) and Dennis Creffield (right) at the exhibition installation Lovers and Romances, Leeds 1966

18. A notorious court case followed with the police were goaded into prosecuting Paraskos for exhibiting this painting on the grounds that it shows male nudity. Stass Paraskos Lovers and Romances I 1966

19. National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. Leading figures in the art world, including Herbert Read and Norbert Lynton gave evidence in favour of Stass. The court case led to global publicity and led to a change in the law in Britain governing public exhibitions of art. Stass Paraskos Newspaper report on the trial in 1966

20. National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. And there is an irony that some of the paintings that led to Stass being prosecuted by the British police are now owned by the main state art gallery in Britain, the Tate, including these two paintings from the 1966 exhibition. Stass Paraskos Lovers and Romances III 1966 Stass Paraskos Lovers and Romances III 1966

21. National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. A year after he was prosecuted in Leeds Stass was invited to show his work alongside Patricia Douthwaite, Ian Dury and Herbert Kitchen at London’s prestigious ICA gallery Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London Exhibition catalogue for Fantasy and Figuration 1967

22. National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. Notably, in the ICA exhibition catalogue Stass emphasised his unusual origins as an artist. He described himself as ‘Born 1933 in Cyprus of peasant stock’. The idea of being an outsider to the polite bourgeois world of mainstream art was to become a recurring theme in the way Stass presented himself as an artist. Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London Exhibition catalogue for Fantasy and Figuration 1967

23. National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. Increasingly Stass’s paintings were becoming more political too. Often the themes related to events in Cyprus. In the 1960s Cyprus suffered an ongoing low level civil war between the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities on the island with irregulars on the island attacking the other side. Much of this was violence stoked by right-wing politicians and military leaders in mainland Greece and Turkey. In 1967 one of the atrocities alleged to have taken place was the rape of Greek Cypriot women on the island by members of the Turkish military based in Cyprus. It prompted Stass to paint this painting, now in the City of Leeds Art Gallery. Stass Paraskos Cypriot Women Raped by Turkish Soldiers 1967

24. National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. As the political situation in Cyprus deteriorated in the early 1970s Stass painted Liberty Abandons Cyprus. Stass Paraskos Liberty Abandons Cyprus 1972

25. National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. During this period Stass was becoming one of the most highly respected art tutors in Britain. He became Head of Painting at Canterbury College of Art (now called the University for Creatives Arts) Stass teaching at Canterbury College of Art (University for Creative Arts) in the 1970s

26. National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. He also persuaded the president of Cyprus, Archbishop Makarios, allow him to set up the first art college in Cyprus, the Cyprus College of Art. This opened in 1969 as an art summer school and later developed into offering foundation, undergraduate ad postgraduate courses. Initially Stass ran the new college from a distance, while still teaching in Britain. Stass meeting President Archbishop Makarios of Cyprus (centre) with the poet Martin Bell (left) in 1968

27. National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. His art also continued to develop. Stass Paraskos Bathing 1968

28. National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. Sometimes revisiting the religious themes he saw in the Orthodox church art he knew as a young boy. Stass Paraskos The Agony and the Ecstasy 1979

29. National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. But also addressing directly the social and political themes that were affecting Cyprus. He returned to live in Cyprus in 1989 and in paintings like The Missing he depicted the relatives of those who had disappeared without a trace during the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. Stass Paraskos The Missing 1995

30. National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. But also addressing directly the social and political themes that were affecting Cyprus. He returned to live in Cyprus in 1989 and in paintings like The Missing he depicted the relatives of those who had disappeared without a trace during the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. Stass Paraskos Mothers of the Missing 2001

31. National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. Although the 1974 invasion of Cyprus by Turkey separated the two ethnic groups on the island, political violence still happened as in the murder of the Cypriot journalist Kutlu Adalı. This event, in 1996 led Stass to make this painting. Stass Paraskos The Murder of Kutlu Adalı 1996

32. National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. In this painting he depicted a Greek school teacher and her Greek pupils who continued to live in the part of Cyprus that fell under Turkish military control in 1974. Stass Paraskos School Teacher of Carpasia and Enclave Pupils 2000

33. National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. And in 1994 he began a series of paintings looking at the sometimes inhuman treatment of women in Cyprus. In particular he wanted to challenge what he saw as the hypocrisy in the way people judged the behaviour of men and the behaviour of women. He exhibited these in a show entitled Human rights – man’s inhumanity to woman. Stass Paraskos Disapproval 1994

34. National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. Stass died in 2014 His son, Michael Paraskos, has written that Stass died a disappointed man. He never received the credit he deserved for bringing a specifically Cypriot form of modern art to Cyprus in the 1960s. He was deliberately shunned by the University of Cyprus when it was set up in 1989, despite Archbishop Makarios and later presidents promising Stass that his Cyprus art school would one day form the university’s fine art faculty. Stass Paraskos Pagan Sprint 1968

35. National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. His work is still shunned by the two major museums of modern art in Cyprus, the Leventis Art Gallery and the Nicosia Municipal Art Gallery. When he declared in the catalogue of the 1967 exhibition at the ICA in London that he was ‘of peasant stock’ Stass demonstrated he knew he would never be accepted by the bourgeois worlds of art and education in Cyprus who want artists to toe the line. His art was always too radical and in life and in death he is always the outsider. Stass Paraskos Illegal Immigrants 1998

36. “I was always a bit of an anarchist. Not the kind of anarchist who wants to blow everything up. The kind of anarchist who is intellectual. Who wants the world to make its own decisions and take responsibility for those decisions. Do not listen to the regulations and laws of others.” Stass Paraskos Inteviewed in Politis (Cyprus newspaper) 28 October 2013