Part II

The harmonic and instinctual balancing of dynamic configurations on the part of the artist - an equilibrium achieved as if by magic, is transformed into a force of suggestions in the abstract compositions which were to follow the exclusively black-white works and would be implemented through the harmonic coexistence of many colors, a coexistence which would soon supply the impetus for an absolute physiological-organic presence of certain forms, such as in the work Animal in Flight (1962). This is a form which, in its first stage, projects itself more through the associations which it provokes than through a predetermined shape, and plays a leading part during the four year period of 1964-1968 in compositions where it constitutes the single pole of attraction as well as being the receiver and transmitter of a multi-dimensional message.

This is the expressionistic phase of Caras, his completely personal contribution to the hotly disputed - because of the variety of expressions involved - movement of post-representationalism, which is firmly founded in his Greek origins and in the impressions which nurtured him since childhood.

Distinctive features, innate to this artist, appear from the very start and consummately define the black-and-white figurative drawings made during the same period, These, demonstrate the great facility of the pointer in designing what for him, as he himself has repeatedly stressed, is the tool par excellence for expressing the mythological inspiration he derives from ancient Greek figures, and for rendering horses so evocative in movement and expression, with an imposing, monumental air.

In each instance we are confronted with the monumental, not in the sense of something static, or a work that is merely large in size, but something that endows the composition with a bearing and a style which is both imposing and suggestive from within, This hallmark of Caras's work will be seen more clearly and more thematically in compositions which the painter describes as lyrical or post -surrealist, ones he also views as expressing a magical realism. We would suggest that all these works be thought of, as post-realist.

The first shock that arises when one compares abstract and expressionistic, semi-figurative works, on the one hand, and figurative ones of the post-realist period on the other, fades - nearly disappears - when one realizes that the difference depends on the reading of the work by the spectator and the interpretation given by him.

The orchestration of harmony, the suggestion of a style, the securing of an equilibrium, all the basic hallmarks of Caras's modes of expression, simply changed form and became externally different when compared with the previous works, but they always represent the opposite side of one and the same coin. Viewed thus as an expression of the opposite side in a relationship of thesis-antithesis, statement-contradiction, as we have already noted, they are recombined in their essence through a structural and once again strict composition within the contradictory pattern of the collage, a contradiction which is more apparent than real. Gradually, many partial solutions were discovered and then examined during the seven years in which the passions of the artist were transubstantiated in an absolutely figurative manner, and through immediately recognizable shapes and forms.

Beginning with the first still life works and ending with the compositions from Caras's residence in the U.S.A. (19731975), where his "ancient warrior" was a rather constant presence along with other forms inspired by ancient Greek and Renaissance statues, we find that the message given by them, is a function of all that is contained or, to put it better, unacknowledged they stand forth among the depicted forms and various designs. Here, the manifest intensity of the previous abstract works - those that were implemented through chromatically violent gestures - has ceded its place to an intensity different in appearance, which functions silently but equally effectively. Put simply, there is a different perception of perspective here, in the relation between the background and the foreground, as well as the communication in general, which takes place between all the things that have been deciphered.

All these are experiences with a powerful sensual presence; yet, at the same time, they are immaterial. These are forms and objects which labor to inter their mystery in the inaccessible. A mystery which creatively energizes, to as high a degree as possible, the space behind them, the space in front of them, and the field of action between them. In the end, they are moulded and remoulded through the relationships they have to each other.