Deux gouaches originales recto-verso signées offertes à son amante française

Two original double-sided gouaches signed, presented to his French lover

1968 | 66 x 47.4cm | single sheet

Original double-sided gouaches on thick paper, signed and dated 1968, bearing an autograph inscription.
Skillfull repairs.
Exceptional original double-sided gouache in a medium unique to Durrell, signed with his artist's pseudonym and given to his French lover: «for Janine Brun Oscar Epfs 1968».
The first, abstract, composition by Durrell has a scene on the verso of a scene of Classical inspiration, recalling his ever-present interest in archeology and the ruins of the glorious past of his dear Greece.
The two gouaches resemble in their effect the paintings of Henry Miller, his artistic and literary mentor, who was using the same pictorial processes at the time – especially patches of gouache in bright, sunny colors.
This work is steeped in his long years in Greece and his passion for Antiquity: on the verso, one can see tunic-clad figures standing before Classical columns, one of them carrying an amphora on his shoulder. This pagan, ancestral Greece appeared in the fine details of most of his works, from Prospero's Cell (about his youth in Corfu, published in 1945) to he Greek Islands (1978). After he established himself at Sommières, he nonetheless went back there often to «find, like an archeologist, the phantoms that haunt countries that have changed so much» (he Shade of the Greek Sun).