04 March 2009 until 02 May 2009

The series of studies by Konstantinos Kerestetzis on show in the “Study at the Prado” exhibition at the Byzantine and Christian Museum are the result of a creative visual dialogue between the young artist and the great masters rather than the distillation of a long period of learning.

The studies range widely, as the artist has selected and isolated faces, parts of the body, details from larger compositions, folds in fabric from paintings by El Greco, Vélasquez, Goya, Titian, Tintoretto, Dürer and others. He strives to remain true to his historic source paintings while simultaneously crafting a new and different work. This, of course, is where Konstantinos Kerestetzis’ visits to the Prado’s galleries have yielded their most significant fruit: in the masters’ teachings assimilated and revitalized by his idiolect and artistic quests. His choice of subjects, viewpoints and thematic combinations, the expressive power of his coloration and his drawings’ aura of speed, all serve to make these works very much his own: entirely new works of art which, collected here, form a discrete period in his work.