Light from light

Icons 2002-2022

by George Kordis

George Kordis is both a traditionalist and an innovator... it is precisely because he is traditional that he is innovative, and it is because he innovates that he is also deeply respectful of true Tradition. Through a process of critical evaluation, he has hit upon what is true in what we have inherited from the past. He has also succeeded in moving the souls of his contemporaries – of our contemporaries - and in convincing them of the priceless spiritual treasures of our Orthodox Tradition in an age which, unfortunately, tends to identify tradition with a sterile conservatism.
- His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew

It is collectively admitted that George Kordis represents a movement in modern iconography, which is based on the work of daring pioneers, of many followers and several adherents pursuing an authentic form of art that reflects the evolution of Orthodox iconography in our times. His treatment of colour as a source of light may be viewed as an innovation, but in reality it reflects and restates a basic concern of the artist who has striven over the centuries to give expression to his work from within...
- Lambros Kamperidis

We have long suggested that icons aren’t really art, or at least not just art. For Kordis, they are at least art, and often a great deal more. Can art alone make an image an icon? The challenge is real, and requires a painter of stature to pose it really.
- Annemarie Weyl Carr

If painting speaks of luminosity and transparency, it speaks poetically; it speaks of life through pictorial lyricism; it speaks of the mystery of the divine in communion with the human insofar as this is possible with line and colour, in the concreteness of its aesthetic facts. In short, painting could be given the definition Elytis gives to poetry: “... the art of approaching that which surpasses us.” These words, it seems to me, encapsulate the main thrust of Kordis’ painting.
- Silouan Justiniano

Cover type: soft
232 pages
Edition #1 published in 2022 by Alexander Press.
ISBN: 978-1-990444-01-2