Iconographer Aidan Hart has argued that "the characteristic feature of last century’s iconography, world-wide, is a shift from a somewhat decadent, sentimental style back to traditional models." Although there were scholarly and social influences helping to effect this revival, he suggests, the return to the actual painting of traditional icons was initiated by just a few iconographers:
"The revival of traditional iconography in Greece is mainly attributable to Photius Kontoglou, who actively used his abilities as a painter, scholar and writer to promote the cause.
Kontoglou was born in 1895 in Ayvali, Asia Minor. After the death of his father the next year he was raised by his mother and her brother, who was abbot of the family monastery. He studied in 1913 at the Athens School of Fine arts, but at the outbreak of the War he travelled throughout western Europe, studying its art, before in due course he came to study and work in Paris. Here he worked as a designer for the "Illustration" publication, from which he received a prize. He began his writing career in 1918 when he wrote and illustrated "Pedro Cazas". In 1919 he returned to his home town where he taught French and technical drawing for two years. In 1922, after the disastrous Asia Minor campaign for which he had been conscripted, he departed to Athens, and married Maria in 1925.
Most of the extant works up to this time are highly accomplished naturalistic works, and generally non-religious in subject matter. Portraits and illustrations predominate. However, there is a discernible growing influence of icons in the simpler, more abstracted style. The earliest overt icon I can find is a Baptism of Christ dated 19232, so it is clear that even in this early time he was being attracted to the Byzantine tradition.
In 1930 he was appointed as technical adviser to the Byzantine museum, Athens. In 1932 he began his fresco painting career by painting, with his pupils Tsarochis and Nikos Engonopoulos, his newly built house in Patisia, Athens.
In 1933 he directed the Coptic museum in Egypt, then the following two years helped clean the wall paintings of Mystra, Greece. From 1937-40 he painted the wall paintings for the Athens City Hall. The most intense time for painting icons and frescos and for writing was from the 1945 until his death in 1965. With his assistants he painted about 5,000 square yards of frescoes, most of which can be found in Athens. Altogether he wrote over a dozen books plus numerous articles. His chief book is "Ekphrasis", published in 2 volumes. This is a painter’s practical manual, and explains techniques as well as the contents of all the major icons."
In Russia Hart writes:
"From the 1930’s, a secret nun named Sister Yuliania (Maria Nikolia Sakalova in the world) was secretly painting icons based on the recently restored medieval icons. Immediately after Stalin officially recognised the Church in 1944, St Sergius’ Lavra was re-established and with it a seminary and academy. Here Sister
Juliania immediately began teaching iconography and restoration to seminarians and monks, and continued to do so until her death in the 1970’s. Hers was the first official academy of iconography in communist Russia and to her is primarily due the restoration in Russia of traditional iconography. It appears to me that her models were taken mainly from the Moscow school of Rubliof’s time (14th and 15th centuries). In
the 1970’s lay people began to come and study under her as well. Her pupils continue the teaching tradition there.
More recently, Archimandrite Zenon has become among the most famous of Russian iconographers. His characteristic feature, at least since the latter 1980’s, has been the choice of inspiration from the Middle Byzantine Era (ninth to thirteenth centuries) rather than Russian models.
Father Zenon was born in 1953 in Pervomaisk of the Nikolayev region where, perhaps significantly, there had been Greek settlements. He later studied at the Odessa arts college, where in his second year he began to paint icons. He then did his military service, as an artist, after which in 1976 he became a monk at Pskov-Pechery monastery.
From 1983 until 1989 he began work on the St Daniel Monastery in Moscow , the new Patriarchal centre. There many Moscow artists began to paint under his direction. A few years ago he was made abbot of an ancient monastery, to restore it and to establish an iconography school in the context of the monastic life. However, after disciplinary action over an ecclesiastical issue he left, with one or two of his monks, to live in a village near the boarder of Estonia and Russia, north of Pskov. Pupils from all over the world still come to study under him, which together with publications of his work and the icons themselves ensure the spread of his influence.
His earlier works, like the St Nicholas Chapel at Pskov, are mainly in the 14th century Russian tradition - particularly the Moscow and Novgorodian schools. Around 1988 works like the St Seraphim side-chapel of the Trinity Cathedral Church of Pskov show a greater influence from the Middle Byzantine period. It should be noted also that there exist in Pskov works from this period, still in the Byzantine style, which doubtless had a direct influence on Fr. Zenon."
Hart writes of Leonid Ouspensky and Fr. Gregory Kroug that few Orthodox "need an introduction to these two painters, particularly perhaps Ouspensky:
"Leonid Ouspensky is known mainly through the many pupils whom he has tutored in Paris, and through his books "The Meaning of Icons", written jointly with Vladimir Lossky, and "The Theology of the Icon", now available in expanded form in two volumes.
Ouspensky has an interesting history. He was born in Russia, where he fought as a teenager with the Red Army. He and some of his comrades were captured by the White Army, who were fleeing the Reds at the time. In the midst of their flight the White soldiers decided to dispose of all their captives, and so lined them up and proceeded to shoot them. Their captain stopped them in time to save the young Ouspensky. He was subsequently taken by them to Germany, where he worked in a mine for some time. Later he went to Paris where he studied art, and began painting icons. Later he came to be known not only as a painter but as a teacher of the craft, as well as a writer and a lecturer on the theology of icons at the St Serge Institute in
Paris.
Among Ouspensky’s best known pupils is the American, Thomas Doolan, now the monk Father Simonas. In our own country another pupil, Mariamna Fortunatto, is known for her teaching the art of iconography.
The other key figure for the Russian tradition in Europe is Fr. Gregory Krug, who lived also in Paris and often worked with Ouspensky. He was born in Petersburg in 1908. His father was Lutheran of Swedish origin and his mother was Russian Orthodox. They later moved to Estonia. Raised in the Lutheran tradition, the future Fr. Gregory became Orthodox at the age of 19. In 1928 he studied art in Tallin, then later in Tartu. In 1931 he left for Paris, where he studied further at the Academy of Art, under Milioti and Samov. But his icon-painting career began when he learned to paint icons with Federov, Stelletsky and Sister Jean (Reitlinger).
During the war he suffered psychologically, from depression I think, and was hospitalised. With the help of his spiritual father he recovered enough to leave and become a monk at the Skete of the Holy Spirit. There for the next twenty years of his life he dedicated himself to icon-painting. He also painted frescoes in churches outside the skete, notably, along with Leonid Ouspensky, the Russian Patriarchal Cathedral in Paris. In this country the monastery of St John the Baptist in Essex has the largest number of his icons. He died in 1969."
Juha Malmisalo, in In Pursuit of the Genuine Christian Image, has written about the revived icon in Lutheran churches, with a specific focus on the work and influence of Erland Forsberg.
She argues that the 20th century:
"was a century of re-evaluation in terms of the artistic, cultural, and religious values of Byzantine religious art. The modernist artistic era put a value on the originality and folkloristic authenticity of Eastern ritual art, which has often been stripped of its original cultic frames and re-located in museums, galleries and collections as objects of artistic contemplation rather than retaining their role as a means of worship and source of spirituality. This development, or change, or expansion of context and use affected both Sweden and Finland, and indeed the whole of Western Europe."
Interestingly, she writes: "the new icon production began concurrently with the stylistic turn from non-presentational modernism to the re-emergence of the pictorial, the presentational, and the narrative in the field of the Fine Arts ... the modernist idea of folkloristic authenticity and appreciation of the naïve did not create an open space of possibles in Sweden and Finland until the 1960s and 1970s."
Forsberg’s desire was "to take in public the position of a genuine and true Old-Church traditionalist icon painter in the social fields accessible to him":
"It was a fight for recognition since, according to him, contemporary church art had failed in its mission. He attempted to create new standards, to turn the positive and negative poles, the power structure of the field of contemporary Lutheran church art production, upside-down by maintaining that it was the revived icon – and not the individualism, "chaos", and "hopelessness" of modernist church art – that represented true Christian Art: the positive, the hopeful, and the age-old."
Forsberg attempted "to become a consecrated icon painter within Lutheranism and to bring new Byzantine pictorial forms and evaluations into Swedish and Finnish contemporary church art."
"Forsberg’s teacher, Uniat Father de Caluwé, is understood as the inheritor of a tradition carried on by the Old Belief Confessors Gavriíl Frolóv and Pimen Sofronov … the chain … through the Old Belief Confessors, the keepers of the original tradition ... proceeds to the Uniat Father and on to the Lutheran Erland Forsberg, to Kjellaug Nordsjö, and to Lars Gerdmar, who uses Forsberg’s name as a means of legitimization."
Yet, a "chain-like presentation of the discipleships is far too simplified to describe the actual network of sharing ideas and influences," Malmisalo writes:
"Nordsjö, for example, would be presented in a commercial connection not only as Forsberg’s pupil, but also as one of de Caluwé’s and others’. Her schooling includes art studies "in the early years" (i unga år) in Oslo and Rotterdam. Gerdmar, in his brief autobiography, puts an especially high value on his contact with Leonid Ouspensky. Moreover, an open letter of recommendation introduces him as a student of art history at the University of Lund, and of icon painting at the New Valamo monastery in Heinävesi, and as an assistant in conservation work. Even the essential elements of Sofronov’s Old-Believer habitus were re-formed when he established connections with Catholics."
In Great Britain Hart suggests that virtually all Orthodox iconographers have been working in the Russian tradition:
"Mention could be made of Fr. David of Walsingham, perhaps known most for his icons of British saints, and his pupil, Leon Lidament. We have already mentioned Mariamna Fortunatto, whose teaching on the theology and the practice of icon-painting has been of great service over the past decades. Although I do not know her work personally, I understand that Matushka Patsy Fostiropolos is busy. The nuns of the Monastery of St John the Baptist in Essex have under the inspiration of Father Sophrony been producing for fifteen years portable icons, frescoes, mosaics, carvings, enamels and embroidery. And then there are numerous other iconographers in various stages of development painting as much as their family or work commitments allow. In the last ten years Sergi Feodorof, a pupil of Fr. Zenon, has become well known through his commissions for Anglican and Catholic cathedrals and abbeys."
In 2007 the Wallspace gallery gathered together 15 contemporary, traditional iconographers who live and work in the UK for what was believed to be the first exhibition of its kind as, while there have been survey exhibitions of icons from other places in the world (such as Russia, Greece and the Balkans), there had never before been an opportunity to get the work of the very best iconographers in Britain together in one place. Not all of the iconographers in Epiphany were UK-born, but they were all working here. And while all the icons shown were contemporary, they were nonetheless produced in the traditional manner, using authentic ancient designs and methods.
Epiphany included works by some of the best current practitioners of traditional iconography, including:
Matushka Patricia Fostiropoulos, who teaches iconography at the Orthodox Cathedral of the Divine Wisdom in central London. Fostiropoulus was first introduced to icons during her training in education and dance. In the early 1970s, having been received into the Orthodox Church, she went to Paris and studied with Russian iconographer Leonid Ouspensky. Since then she has painted icons, both large and small, for individuals, churches and cathedrals as well as, more recently, teaching iconography at the Orthodox Cathedral of the Divine Wisdom in central London.
Aidan Hart, visiting tutor for The Prince's School of Traditional Arts and lecturer at the Cambridge University International Summer School. Hart has been a professional icon painter, carver and fresco painter for over 20 years. Born in England, he was raised in New Zealand, where he gained a degree in English literature and later worked as a professional sculptor. On becoming a member of the Orthodox Church he returned to England and for 12 years explored as a novice the monastic life. He has studied the art of iconography in Britain, Thessalonica and Mount Athos. Among his major commissions are works in the collections of HRH The Prince of Wales and His Holiness the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomeios. He has had icons and frescoes commissioned in over 15 countries. He runs two icon courses a year in Shropshire. He has lectured widely, has had numerous articles published, and has curated four exhibitions of old and new icons.
Dr Guillem Ramos-Poqui, a founding member of the Association of Iconographers of Ireland, and a Patron of the Association of British Iconographers. Ramos-Poqui has taught and given demonstrations on the technique of icon painting in numerous museums and monasteries in Europe and the United States, and has undertaken many church commissions. He was Head of Fine Art at Kensington and Chelsea College, London (1990-2004). He now paints full time and also teaches advanced painting at Morley College. His book The Technique of Icon Painting, was first published in the UK by Search Press in 1990.
Dr Stéphane René, the foremost exponent of the Contemporary Coptic style, an associate of the Temenos Academy and also teaches at the Prince's School of Traditional Arts. René has practiced Coptic Iconography since the early 1980s. He spent six years in Cairo, as an apprentice in the studio of the late Coptic master Prof Isaac Fanous Yossef, the founder of the Neo-Coptic School. This unique style of Iconography draws heavily on its Pharaonic artistic heritage as well as modern art theory, yet remains deeply rooted in Orthodox Christian theology. René is the foremost exponent of the Contemporary Coptic style in the western hemisphere. He received his PhD in 1990 from the Royal College of Art, London and has worked extensively in the USA and Europe for the Coptic, as well as Roman Catholic and Anglican churches.
Silvia Dimitrova who was born in Pleven, Bulgaria and won a place at the prestigious School of Applied Arts at Troyan at the age of 13. She graduated in 1989, and then studied icon painting in Sofia under the tuition of Georgi Tchouchev, the grand master of Bulgarian icons. In 1999 she was commissioned by Downside Abbey to paint the Icon of St Benedict and, in 2000, worked as artist-in-residence at Wells Cathedral - with a commission to paint the Stations of the Cross for the Millennium. Silvia was shortlisted for the European Women of Achievement Awards 2000 for contributions to the Arts. Since then she has been working on both private and public commissions including St Paul's Cathedral, London and Hertford College, Oxford.
Sister Petra Clare, who is inspired by the vision of renewing the ancient skete tradition within mainstream western monastic life at the Sanci Angeli Skete, Marydale, Cannich, Inverness-shire where she now lives and works. She has completed icons for, among others: The Bishop of Aberdeen, Rt Rev Mario Conti; Cambridge University Catholic Chaplaincy; Pluscarden Abbey, Scotland; Walsingham Pilgrimage memorial book and the St Barnabas Society.
Sister Nadejda (Owiny), who was born in Moscow, where she studied textiles and decorative arts. She taught in the Faculty of Textile at the Stroganoff Art Institute and worked at the State Conservation and Restoration Workshop. Marrying and coming to Britain in 1976 she worked in the Textile Conservation Laboratories at Hampton Court Palace, and joined Cecil Collins's master class in drawing and colour at the Central School of Art and Design. Since 1981 she has been a member of the Russian Orthodox Cathedral parish at Ennismore Gardens, where she trained in iconography under Mariamna Fotounatto, former pupil of Ouspensky. In 2002 she took a monastic vocation and went to Russia to undertake an intensive course in Icon painting. She now lives as an anchorite and paints icons for churches and individual commissions.
Sister Esther (Pollak), who is a member of the Benedictine Community at Turvey Abbey in Bedfordshire. She is co-founder and president of the British Association of Iconographers. She has undertaken many commissions for icons, and runs courses at Turvey Abbey and elsewhere. She is also attached to the Greek Catholic Melkite Parish in London. This, together with her involvement with icons and Orthodoxy, is part of the calling of her Benedictine Foundation to work and pray for the unity of Christians from both eastern and western traditions.
The Revd Regan O'Callaghan, who is originally from New Zealand and completed his further education in England with an MA in Christian Ethics at Kings College, London and then studied for Ordination in the Church of England at Westcott House, Cambridge. During his ordination training he spent five months on exchange to the Venerable English College in Rome, as well as one month's study at the Tantur Ecumenical Centre in Israel. Regan has been based at St John's on Bethnal Green since September 2003 as a self-supporting priest. He has studied iconography in the studio of Sr Bernadette Crook for the past five years. He is a member of the British Association of Iconographers. Regan's commissions include icons for Diocesan House, London, St Paul's Covent Garden and an icon for St Paul's Cathedral.
Hart concludes:
"We can characterise twentieth century iconography first, by a return to traditional models in the Orthodox countries, and second, by the reintroduction of the icon tradition itself to the west. Though we might regret icons being bought and sold as art objects on the commercial market, at least this process, along with often secular scholarship, has brought the icon tradition and Orthodoxy in general much more into the western public consciousness. Icons have a life of themselves, independent of the reasons people might buy or sell them.
Thirdly, and I think this is what concerns us most, there was and is still, a growing feeling that in fact we might not have returned to the tradition as much as we thought we had. Having effectively lost the tradition, we are finding that it is not so easy to regain it in all its subtlety and profundity. We need to dig deeper still, to understand the icon’s timeless principles so that new icons can be more authentic, can go beyond the extremes of fearful copying and impatience “to do one’s own thing” before humbly imbibing the tradition."
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Arvo Part - Magnificat.
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