“It is my conviction that the conflicts of science and metaphysics can best be resolved through art. Art is not the domain of the elite, although some try to make it so. It is in reality the life’s breath of mankind. It is mankind’s building of a culture. I have always had a strong sense of adding to that culture, and a strong feeling of obligation to attempt to resolve, through my art, the great ideas of my time.”

— George Constant

By Georgette Preston

Biographical Sketch

Arahova is a mountain village opposite Delphi, overlooking the Aegean Sea. It was there, in 1892, that George Constant was born, the son of Zachary and Zapire Constantinopoulos, who died within a few months of each other during Constant's fourth year. Two uncles, one the head of the monastery of Eleusa near Patras, the other a merchant of Aegion, took charge of the child. Constant attended school in Aegion during the winter and spring months and spent his summers at the monastery.

Constant was drawn very early to the beauty of the icons, resplendent Byzantine works, that adorned the walls at Eleusa. The hushed life of the monastery might have wearied anyone not dedicated to it, but Constant, fascinated by the rich color and bold line of the icons, turned his energies, which might otherwise have been wasted, to studying them. When he had absorbed all that Eleusa could offer he sought other sources of the Greek tradition, and as he grew into young manhood he intensified his studies of Archaic and Classical Greek art. An interest was quickened from this close application, not as a scholar but as a young artist. Constant began to draw the life about him, anything and everything, until slowly and imperceptively his hand, his eye and he himself were committed to a lifetime of art.

By the time Constant was eighteen he had already some sense of himself as an artist. Even at that early age he was cognizant of the danger of being overpowered by the old art and its old forms, and of the death, for an artist, in becoming a prisoner of its perfection. Like all artists he had an instinct for exile. Unlike most, for him Paris was not the panacea. He came from a far greater culture, and he was in far greater revolt. He needed to go somewhere free, brash, lusty and growing. He migrated to America.

During his first year in the new land Constant went to St. Louis, where he enrolled in the School of Fine Arts at Washington University. Two years later, in 1914, he was given a White Scholarship to the Art Institute of Chicago. There he studied with many instructors but felt particularly drawn to two, George Bellows and Charles Hawthorne. It was also at the Art Institute that Constant saw for the first time the original work of Cezanne. It seemed to the young man to be one of those moments of truth, for until that time he had known Cezanne's work only in reproduction, his principal source of clippings being the London Studio. Constant felt a very definite kinship with Cezanne, and some of his early work was influenced by the master.

The time spent at the Art Institute expanded Constant's world immeasurably. New ideas and new movements flowered overnight, and Constant found himself in the thick of them. At the same time America herself widened his horizons. The immensity of the land and the great flow of people, as diverse as their country, captured his imagination, and that emotion liberated him. The last prison of the mind, the narrow and provincial, was destroyed. There were no more boundaries, only horizons in his life in art. Gradually, subtly, his Hellenic heritage became united with the heritage of the new world. Happily, the new world welcomed him as warmly as he did her, and his paintings were exhibited for the first time in a group show at the Arts Club in Chicago in 1918.

About this time Constant began to feel that the new ideas and influences which had penetrated American art needed a new theatre. He and a number of his friends at the Art Institute decided that Hull House, with its brave new ideas, would be the ideal place, and in 1918 they started a class there on the modern movement. Both the class and the brash young men attracted much attention. Soon they were asked to become instructors at the Dayton Art Institute. Constant accepted a position and taught there until 1922. During his time as an instructor there much of his work was exhibited at the Dayton Art Institute.

By this time Constant had married an accomplished pianist, Florence Farwell.

From this marriage came two children, a son Homer who died tragically at eight, and a daughter, Georgette. The marriage lasted until Florence's death in 1937. Constant did many drawings, etchings, and paintings of his family, and all of them reveal the warmth and closeness of his family life. Later he married Elizabeth Farwell, the younger sister of Florence. Elizabeth was a young artist in her own right and fit easily into the life which Constant led. Never very strong, Elizabeth died of a heart condition only a few years after the marriage. Constant's drawings of his second wife show some of the tenderness and grief he felt for her. In 1942 Constant married Calliroe Lekakis, his present wife. Calliroe, who used her name professionally as a modern dancer, gave up her career and devoted herself to building a life with Constant. He has done countless drawings and paintings of her, each of a direct, fresh, powerful and inspired nature. Though Constant has known tragedy and loneliness in his loss of a son and two wives, his personal life has been a remarkably stable and rewarding one.

In 1922 Constant moved from Dayton to New York, where he has remained. He came to the city ready for it: its intellectual climate invigorated him and its reach inspired him. He made it his own-skyscraper and bridge, river and rock, and his canvases took on new dimension. During his first year in New York he worked as a scenic designer and very quickly entered the art life of the city. He joined the Society of Independent Artists and later was elected one of its Directors. Through the Society Constant came to know many of the established artists. Among these was John Sloan, a fierce defender of modern art and a true friend to the younger artists. Constant also became a friend of the art critic Walter Pach, who was one of the founders of the Society. The friendship was a close one, full of vigor and crackling argument, with much respect on both sides. It lasted until Pach's death in 1958. A scrupulously honest man, Pach never permitted friendship to interfere with his criticism of art. It was after a long period of study of Constant's work that Pach decided that Constant's contribution was unique and of great significance. Pach wrote of Constant both in his book, The Art Museum in America, and for the February, 1957, issue of The Atlantic in a vigorous article entitled "Submerged Artists". In that article Pach took the opportunity to comment specifically on Constant's architectural period, writing in part: "These later years have seen him developing a 'building block style' that could apply admirably to the decoration of our big modern edifices. Their stonework must not lose its integrity or the clarity of function attained when architecture divested itself of the gingerbread frosting of the nineteenth century. But the bare forms that remained have been crying out, also, for more of a human quality; and with the lovers that Constant can see portrayed in his most austere tributes to the beauty of stone, there is indeed warmth that is lacking in pure geometry, plane or solid."

In 1924, just two years after Constant had arrived in New York, he exhibited with the Society of Independent Artists and the dealer Valentine Dudensing first saw his work at the exhibition. Immediately Constant was invited to join the Valentine Gallery. About the same time the Downtown Gallery began to show his graphics and watercolors. By 1927 Constant had joined the New Art Circle of J. B. Neumann. This was an important event in Constant's life, for Neumann was the first dealer to buy his work and to give him a one-man show in New York. Neumann also reproduced Constant's work in his magazine, The Art Lover. Neumann was later responsible for exhibiting the artist's work in Germany.

In the same year that Constant joined the New Art Circle, his work came to the attention of Hi Simons, who in 1927 wrote an appreciation of it for the Chicago Evening Post Magazine of the Art World. He said in part: "It is rare for an etcher, except of the slightly tame architectural subjects, to work on so large a scale as this. Constant does so fearlessly, in a manner which particularly challenges criticism of his line. His performance is impeccable. There are few artists in America who could cut a telling line in metal as surely as he has done here. This is a product of a man whose conception of line is singularly pure and powerful. One of Constant's chief claims to unprejudiced consideration is the honest originality of his work. And there is nothing quite like him anywhere else in the world of art." Following Constant's association with the New Art Circle the Weyhe Gallery bought some of his work and arranged an exhibit at the University of Mexico. Constant by this time had become aware of Pre-Columbian art which he found to have much in common with the Archaic Greek and Oriental arts.

During the Depression years Constant executed many works for the Federal Art Project. They were in all media; graphics, watercolors, oils. His work was sent all over the country, and it can be found today in many museums and public institutions, among them the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Philadelphia Museum. Constant's association with the W. P. A. was a good one, as it saw him through a difficult period and gave him an opportunity to be seen by a vast public.

In 1936 Constant was invited to show in "The 36 Best American Painters" Exhibition at the City Art Museum in St. Louis. This most particularly pleased Constant, for it was in St. Louis, of course, that he had begun his new life in art. In 1939 Constant participated in the World's Fair in New York with his watercolor Arabesque, and in the San Francisco Golden Gate Exhibition with his oil, Nude With Grapes (color plate II). It was also in 1939 that he received the Shilling Purchase Prize for his watercolor, Figure (plate 27) which is now in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This was the first of three Shilling Purchase Prizes which Constant was to be awarded. Five years before Constant took his first prize, Winslow Ames, then Director of the Lyman Allyn Museum, had in February 1934 made the following evaluation of Constant as a watercolorist in New London's newspaper, The Day: "Mr. Constant has in the course of his work in Europe and America built up a style which is in its means economical yet delicate, and in its effect broad yet incisive. The watercolors are admirable examples of technical proficiency as well as of sensitive organization. The artist has taken the fullest advantage of the wet and fluid nature of the medium, and has used the white background of the paper to add brilliance to his quiet color scheme of blue, brown and green. His single forms are comparatively large and uncomplicated, but are combined into designs whose real complexity is the secret of their apparent calm simplicity."

The 1940s and I950s proved to be exciting years in bringing Constant recognition for his work. In 1940 Constant, with a group of New York artists, founded the Society of Modern Painters and Sculptors. Constant later served as President of the group. In 1943 he received the Frank G. Logan Prize and medal of the Chicago Art Institute for his painting The First Gift (plate 35). Two years later the Shilling Purchase Prize was again awarded to Constant. This time the prize was given for his painting, Water Lilies (plate 40), now in the permanent collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts. In 1947 he received the Library of Congress Purchase Prize for his drypoint Portrait of John Sloan (plate 11). The year before he had participated in the International Exhibition of Modern Art at the Musee d'Art Moderne in Paris. In 1951 Constant's work went again to that city. This time it was included in an exhibition of Contemporary American Watercolors held at the American Embassy. Later this exhibition which was sponsored by the United States Information Agency, traveled through France and much of Europe. In 1956 Constant was again included in an exhibition of contemporary American painters which made the circuit of European museums. In 1957 Constant received the Shilling Purchase Prize for his painting, Sea, Sun and Shy (color plate IX), now in the permanent collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. In the same year the State Department purchased numerous watercolors, and the United States Information Agency selected an oil, Figures by the Sea, to be reproduced in color for exhibition in countries all over the world. During this time Constant had many one-man shows in the United States in such galleries as Dikran Kelekian, Frederick N. Price, Philip Boyer, and Grace Borgenicht.

Each of Constant's one-man shows has demonstrated his continued search and exploration of challenging new ideas. Carlyle Burrows characterized Constant as an "artist of ideas" in the Herald Tribune (I952), going on to say: "For it is an artist of ideas more than the maker of strongly simplified, sternly abstract, and robust geometrical designs of largely decorative substance that he figures to be known. But in spite of the fact that concepts of stone rarely yield with great success to painterly interpretation, his painting of this nature expresses a romantic mood. In these mysterious, strangely architectural compositions, his figures proclaim the affinity of life, of the ideal harmony of nature. They are imagined with deep earnestness."

Constant continues to paint with deep earnestness and to proclaim the affinity of life in new ways. He brings to his canvas fifty years of life in art. He brings an affirmation: the hand and the eye, the eager spirit and the searching mind, to make the radiance we call art.