Farewell Takis

To all friends who have not heard the sad news, Takis, now finally showing at Tate Modern, is no longer. He died on the 9^th of August in his home and the centre of his foundation, Kete, Gero Vouno, in Greece.

“When I met him, he was listening to the stars.
He said he heard their music and was working on an
Instrument, which would trap it so that all could hear the sound.
The sound of sounds.
Excitedly he showed me his first results.
Mathematics – I said.
He had caught the current and made it show itself.
No sound.
He hadn’t been able to trap it, he explained but had found something else.
Look!
I saw it.”

Crossing Map – Liliane Lijn, 1983

I was 18 when I first met Takis, he was 33, modest, shy and very romantic.

He was the first artist to take a serious interest in my work and to offer to teach me the art of lost wax. We lived together and apart for seven years and he was an important influence and inspiration in my work and thought.

I thank him for introducing me to Greece, the Greece of myths and history and the magical country of his youth and what it then became, when we lived there together in the 1960’s. My interests in science and my immersion in the diverse materials I have worked with were encouraged and inspired by his innovative work with magnetism, fireworks, explosives.

Takis will be remembered as a great artist but also as a wonderful story-teller, a beautiful, charismatic man, whose generosity and humour allowed one to forgive him many a sin.

We built what has become Kete, at Gero Vouno, together in the early 60’s with the idea that it would become a place where we could watch the stars and I lived there with our son, Thanos until 1966, when Takis and I parted as good friends.

Two months ago, he called me to tell me something important, as if to make a final connection.  He insisted I watch a DVD of Charlie Chaplin’s The Circus, saying, “You must look at it.  You will see your work in the film and mine”

“Xairete o Takimou, τώρα είσε με τα αστέρια”

Liliane Lijn