Is this the most hated artist in Cyprus?

George Gavriel’s house is a little tricky to find, the name of the street (a small, dead-end street on the outskirts of Nicosia) not easily discernible when you search online – which is ironic, because, on the evening of December 18, unknown attackers drove by the house and hurled an explosive device that blew up with a deafening bang, alarming the artist’s family but, fortunately, causing only minimal damage. Google Maps doesn’t know where the house is, but extremist thugs do.

Those behind the attack remain unidentified – but the object of their ire was undoubtedly George’s art, the ‘blasphemous’ paintings which had already led to the closure of an exhibition in Paphos a few days earlier.

The actual explosion came on the heels of a social-media explosion and political storm, sparked in part by a fake collage – provocatively blending together bits of different paintings, including some that weren’t even in the exhibition – posted by Disy MP Efthymios Diplaros.

“These reactions were to be expected. After all, that was part of the point of my work,” said the artist in an interview with Kathimerini – but that was actually in 2020 when his paintings once again sparked a furious backlash, leading to complaints from the Archbishopric and Eoka veterans’ associations and prompting the ministry of education (he was still a teacher at that time, actually a headmaster) to launch a disciplinary investigation against him.

In fact – and for all the wrong reasons – George Gavriel may be the best-known painter in Cyprus, or at least the most notorious. If you asked 100 people on the street to name three local artists, he’d probably receive the most mentions – though some would presumably refer to him as ‘that guy with the painting of the naked Jesus’ or ‘the one with the painting where a swarthy, migrant-looking type urinates on a statue of [Eoka leader] Grivas’.”

That one must’ve bothered the nationalists, I say light-heartedly.

“Definitely,” replies George. “I think that’s the one that bothered them, actually, and they just used Jesus as a pretext!”

I’ve located the house by this time – a two-storey affair, with his daughter and her family on the upper floor – and been welcomed inside, sitting in George’s spacious studio with a cup of coffee and a generous spread of mixed nuts, Christmas cake and olive pies.

The pies are unusual, the dough uncommonly soft and foamy. They’re Chinese, he explains, made by his wife (his second wife; not the mother of his daughter and son) who is indeed from China. He’s just back from that country himself, having spent a week showing his work at a Biennale in Beijing – though China’s actually an outlier (they only go for his wife’s sake), he very rarely exhibits abroad.

I’m surprised, I say truthfully. Surely our various diasporas would be interested in hosting an artist who’s caused such a ruckus in the old country – but George just shrugs. Gallery owners aren’t too proactive about arranging such things, he says vaguely – and he himself doesn’t particularly care about self-promotion.

“I’m not interested. I’m interested in working, producing work, expressing myself through my art… It’s not like I seek attention, and that’s why I cause all this trouble.” He pauses, as if trying to express himself more precisely. “I don’t actually cause the trouble myself, basically. It’s other people who cause it.”

That’s perhaps a bit disingenuous. After all, the title of his Paphos show (the one that was forced to close down after one day) was ‘Anti-systemic Art’, and his old quote in Kathimerini shows he’s well aware – how could he not be? – that his work is liable to provoke some people.

But he’s also being truthful in that he doesn’t seek the spotlight. He was a painter for three decades – his first show was in 1987; he’s had an exhibition at least every couple of years since then – without any trouble, while holding down a day-job in education where his behaviour, by all accounts, was equally unimpeachable.

In fact, he reveals with a twinkle, when the ministry carried out its investigation (he was cleared of any wrongdoing), they specifically tried to find out if he’d ever vetoed class trips to churches and monasteries, in his capacity as headmaster – but he never had. Whatever his personal beliefs, he never let them interfere with the government job.

His personal style is equally mild. I’m unsure what to expect when I ring the doorbell, my mind full of social-media storms and explosive devices – but the man himself is quiet, bespectacled, a little formal. He’s bundled up (it’s a chilly morning) in rather drab, grey and olive colours which, combined with his owlish expression, lend him a resigned, melancholy air.

We sit in the studio, surrounded by art books, paint brushes, sheets of galvanised metal – he’s begun a new side-project as a sculptor – and a profusion of artworks, including some of the religion-themed paintings that caused the ruckus six years ago.  

His troubles are real (he has an appointment at CID in a few days, he tells me, to show them the threatening messages that continue to arrive), but he talks of them without rancour. Even his art is by no means as incendiary as it’s made out to be.

“Many people, who don’t know my work, think that George Gavriel is obsessed with Jesus and the Virgin Mary and never does anything else,” he observes mildly. “But those who know will tell you that much of my work – maybe 70 per cent – is actually about Cyprus, its environment, its people, and especially its farmers.”

Rural Cyprus is a big part of the oeuvre – and a huge part of his own life. George grew up in Kokkinotrimithia when it was still a village (he was born in 1959), and was always close to the land; even now, his only relaxation is cultivating a small vegetable patch next to the house. He remembers being 11 or 12 and spending his summer down the road in Avlona, picking carrots in the fields alongside the adult workers.

He’s always worked – and had to grow up fast, as the youngest of eight kids. Both parents worked menial jobs (his dad at nearby Nicosia airport, pre-invasion), with little money and no support system. “I remember, when I was small, they had to take my 11-year-old sister out of school, to take care of me”.

Even as a child, he always said he wanted to be a painter – though it’s unclear what art even meant, in that family. Learning a trade was the usual route. His older brothers worked in car body shops, as did George himself for a year after the army – learning how to weld metal, a skill he now applies to his sculptures.

Ironically, the closest he came to art during childhood was probably going to church, but any aesthetic joy in Byzantine icons was destroyed by the violence of the system. In primary school, he recalls, “if you didn’t go to church on Sunday, you’d be called out during assembly on Monday and punished with a stick across the palm of your hand”. It’s unclear how this shaped his views on religion (he’s essentially an atheist), or indeed education.  

George was always sketching and drawing in his free time, but knew nothing of technique – at least till he finally went to university at 21, in Moscow, on an Akel scholarship. (He was always a man of the Left.) It doesn’t really matter, he insists. Technique is important – but what’s more important is “having a subject. Having something to say”. 

In short, all art is political: “Even when you draw still lifes and landscapes, it’s your choice to close your eyes to everything that’s happening around you, and stick to your landscapes”.

Not all his paintings are explicitly political – but almost all focus on people (as opposed to landscapes, or abstract art), and many are indeed inspired by the world around them. Hence, for instance, the one with Putin on a $100 bill, or the series called ‘The Fallen’ – painted at the time of the economic crisis – with fallen angels roaming amid McDonalds and Coca-Cola signs, the detritus of capitalism. Or indeed the ‘blasphemous’ ones showing Jesus as a biker, or a football fan, or a migrant at Pournara camp, or one half of a gay couple.  

These, too, are political – because the church in Cyprus is political, says George, whether it’s pontificating on the Turks and the Cyprus problem, taking money (as the previous Archbishop did) to help golden-passport applicants, or refusing to condemn the genocide in Gaza. “I believe that the system, through the church, manipulates people.”

The paradox is that the actual teachings of Jesus are quite close to how George depicted Him, allied with the poor and disenfranchised. Life also imitated religion in 2022, when Kokkinotrimithia – which houses Pournara – became inundated with migrants from the overflowing camp, leading to a wave of panic about foreigners stealing things and trespassing in people’s yards.

There were public meetings, recalls George, with local leaders and political parties in attendance – “but they didn’t see the issue from the humanitarian side. They were looking at it with xenophobia. And they kept going on about ‘What if’ – ‘What if they come to the village and cause trouble?’. ‘What if they break into our homes?’. And I got up and said: ‘How can you make a decision using ‘What if?’.”

In short, his fellow villagers were ruled by fear – and fear, in the end, may be what rules us all, fear of death (and the promise of life after death) being religion’s secret weapon, fear of foreigners, or crime, or drugs, or Covid, being how the system keeps its hooks in people.

George Gavriel doesn’t seem especially ruled by fear. Yes, the obvious thrust of our interview has to do with censorship and freedom of speech – and of course the violence against him is shocking, and it’s unacceptable that people (even, or especially, politicians) should be so intolerant, and seek to stifle creative expression.

On a personal level, though, what’s most intriguing is perhaps how someone can face so much hatred – and appear so unbothered by it.

Not that he’s immune to fear. He was scared when the makeshift device exploded, especially with the grandkids upstairs. But he does tend to approach life “a bit more calmly” than most people, “without too much stress”. It also helps that he avoids reading threats and hurtful messages: “When I read them, I do get upset. So I avoid them”.

But it’s also that he paints – every day, for hours on end, both while he worked in education, going to his studio after school hours, and now, in retirement. “This, I believe is the most important thing. Creativity takes you away from the problems of daily life, and the threats.”

George paints, he does nothing else. He’s worked all his life, from his childhood days picking carrots in Avlona, and just keeps working now; “I try to work as much as possible”. He’s extremely prolific. Every wall in his home is festooned with paintings. He’ll listen to the radio while working, but hasn’t watched TV for many years. He has no hobbies (just the vegetable patch), and no obvious vices. He believes in creative labour, with no God or religion to distract him.

Doesn’t it hurt his feelings, though, to be hated so openly?

“Well, you certainly feel uncomfortable. I won’t say it doesn’t affect me… To get so much hate from people who don’t even know you – and don’t even know your work, or the thinking behind all these paintings.

“And we’re talking, after all, about a painting – a bit of paper and a bit of paint. Can I really offend their God with a painting? Can God really be so vulnerable?…”

The question hangs in the air in the huge, cluttered studio, one man’s temple – if that’s the word – to the power of artistic expression. It’s a way of life, says George Gavriel about his art, a lifelong habit. A way to “bring out all the things you have inside you,” he adds with a half-smile – and looks suddenly slightly less melancholy.