Page 147 - Maxim_Painting_Monograph

Young Georges Florovsky from His Hometown Odessa, through Paris to New York, acrylic on canvas, 2022
Young Florovsky is immersed in his thoughts, while on the horizon are discerned his hometown Odessa in flames of a then distant war, Paris and New York. Georges Florovsky was born on August 28, 1893, in Elisavetgrad (the city of Kirovograd in present-day southern Ukraine) and grew up in the cosmopolitan city-port of Odessa. He moved between different European centers-Sofia, Prague, Paris, and Belgrad. In 1925 he became a professor of patristics at the St. Serge Institute of Orthodox Theology in Paris. He spent his working life in Paris (1920–1949) and New York (1949–1979). With Sergei Bul- gakov, Vladimir Lossky, Justin Popović, and Dumitru Stăniloae he was one of the more influential Eastern Orthodox Christian theolo- gians of the mid-20th century.
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Čiča Draža, acrylic on canvas, 2021
This work establishes the distinctive artistic identity of the painter Bishop Maxim. We emphasize the particular way of writing the sky that contains the warmth of red, with the glittering city in the far distance, the rivers, forests, flowers, and fields neo-Impressionist, with the houses echoing of Serbian folk art and the “hard realism” of the General’s uniform and especially his face that dominates in the center of the composition. A strong face like a wood-carved bust of a hard statue, but which distills from the bluish pearly glare of his eyes and nose the sensitivity of his ideals: We fight not to kill, but to prevent impending dehumanization. — Stamatis Skliris