Part V

The core of, and connecting link between, the artist's various periods, is the psychological elaboration which is differentiated - by period - only in terms of its figurative expression.

The psychological situations experienced by the painter to an extreme - fashioned, in the case of the human forms of the expressionist period, a superbly eloquent transmitter and receiver. These figures were incorporated in the framework of post-representationalism, again only coincidentally. This is because they brought along their own tragic sense, exclusively by themselves and in force. They shout out their passion like unusually sensitized decoys, an endless pain and an unspeakable suffering which has never born any relation to puppets set up according to the partial solutions of fashion. A landmark in an international framework - of a return to the figurative, after the triumph of abstraction and more specifically, that abstraction which took the form of nonobjective art and was the artists' answer to the shock of World War II. Here, we are once more reminded that Caras's reaction was again imbued - exclusively - with the components of his own temperament and psychological make-up, a psychology which not only has not been exhausted by the various phases and periods of his career but which, on the contrary, appears to be gaining strength, as the artist records and implements the stimulation that he is experiencing.

This is recorded with a multifarious intensity through his relief constructions projected in space with characteristic plasticity. Utilizing these, Caras exploits his abilities to the extreme and, more importantly, without being compromised by resolutions which would alter the authenticity of his contribution. Here the indissoluble connection between inspiration and expression does not leave any room for the disruptive-parasitic elements, and supplies the "measure" of the contribution.

The personal element, a guarantee of the purity of his one meets in the works of the surrealists. This is a measure and a style which expresses a harmony that Caras lives, a harmony which he inherited from his swaddling clothes, in the land of his ancestors who first cultivated it from their own roots, safeguarding once and for all, the contribution of their natural gifts.

Measure and style, the instinctual feeling of harmony, are the keys to Caras's work viewed when as a whole. The connecting links between the various stages confirm the intensity and authentic grounding point of his personality. Another connecting link is the brilliant metier - technical perfection - found in the implementation of his work. The artist was taught this straight from the beginning, and the undivided respect which he showed for the qualitative favorable execution of a work, is what insures both the symbolical and literal durability of his figurative contribution.

In Christos Caras, there is sometimes an apparent and, at other times, a suggested eroticism which is always of the essence, lending a magical strength and a spiritual tissue to what he creates. This eroticism is not an interrelation of erotic subjects, of anatomical details, of curves and of the suppleness of the female body, nor it is even in the correlation and harmonization of exploratory resolutions found in the round or oval shape of a table, in the superabundant appearance of a piece of fruit.

On the contrary, it nestles like a vestige in his work, in the patterns, in the outline of whatever object and whatever form he is concerned with. This is an eroticism which the painter was distrustful of, and which he had already experienced on the plain of Thessaly, in everything that went on at every moment - repeatedly and simultaneously - and which is invisible at first glance. This is because on the plain, life pulsates in its most direct form; in the uprooting of a plant, in the erotic relationship contribution, was already localized in the water-colors, the artist made even before he enrolled in the Athens School of Fine Arts. One can also notice and follow it in the compositions from his school years, as well as during his student days at the Beaux-Arts, and his first years of residence in Paris. At that time, the pointer was impressed by the work of Cezanne and consequently, came to express in his own manner, the international artistic currents with all their demands and limitations.