The Politicized Christoforos Savva: A Cypriot Artist "De-cementing" Nationalism and "Weaving" Cypriotism

Abstract:Christoforos Savva, one of the most significant Cypriot artists of the 1960s, was also a highly politicized individual whose leftist worldview paralleled his artistic development. Nevertheless, this side of Savva has not been thoroughly explored. Savva created two forms of art: cementografia and ifasmatografia. Ifasmatografies were based on the vernacular tradition of weaving, while cementografies used modern cement, which was coming to replace stone in building construction. Savva's art departed from contemporary nationalist art production, such as that of the painter Adamantios Diamantis, and it also diverged from the Western colonial/orientalist projections depicting a premodern Cyprus. Overall, Savva's oeuvre bore all the hallmarks of contesting both Cypriot nationalisms—the Greek and the Turkish—since it was inclusive and anti-nationalist in its essence.