‘Apollo’ Theater

“’Apollo’ Theater” is a remembrance of childhood by an aging artist. In the final years of his life, working from his studio in Maroussi, Agenor Asteriadis mentally returns to the city where he was born and lived until the age of twelve. The theater he portrays with nostalgic tenderness and a child’s gaze was very real: operating from the late 19th century until 1925, it is regarded as Larissa’s first theatrical venue. The composition is flat and balanced, defined by clean contours, vivid colors, and an absence of shadows or perspective. Dominating the scene is a fiery-red backdrop, more compelling than the impersonal nude dancer whose presence seems to leave the audience indifferent. The theater itself appears to hover in the stylized clouds, untethered from the earth. Thematically and chromatically, the work recalls earlier paintings such as “Bubbles at a Country Fair” (1957), “Country Fair” (1958), and “Shooting Gallery” (1958). Two years later, in 1977, Asteriadis would revisit the ‘Apollo’ Theater in his large-scale, multi-scene composition “Trade Fair.” In these works, he may well have had in mind the circus world and dancers of Georges Seurat.