Writing and Light

Nicolas Calas (1907–1988), also known by the pseudonyms Nikitas Rantos and M. Spiros, was born in Lausanne. As an infant, he moved with his family to Athens, where he lived until 1934 and studied at the Law School of the University of Athens. During his studies, he was a member of the Student Society, where he met Giorgos Theotokas and Ilias Tsirimokos and other members of the ‘Educational Circle’, following in the footsteps of Dimitris Glinos. He subsequently divided his time between Athens and Paris (from 1937, he lived permanently in the French capital for two years) and, from 1939, spent a year in Lisbon. In Paris, he came into contact with the avant-garde artistic movements of the time, particularly Surrealism. In 1942, he settled in New York. During the Second World War, he volunteered at the Office of War Information and in 1945 he became a US citizen. He worked at Columbia University as a research fellow in the ‘Research in Contemporary Cultures’ programme and at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey, where he held the post of Associate Professor of Art.

He returned to Greece briefly in the 1960s, when he collaborated with the magazine “Pali”, left, and returned after the political transition of 1974. During this second visit, he gave lectures and contributed to the magazines "Hnari" and "Socialism or Barbarism", with which his friend Michalis Raptis (Pablo) was associated. Shortly afterwards, he returned to the USA, where he remained until his death. He made his literary debut in 1929 with articles published in the magazines "Foititiki Syntrofia", "Noumas" and "Peitharchia". In 1932, he published his first collection of poetry, entitled "Poems".

Indicative of his influences from the movements of German Expressionism, Russian Futurism and Surrealism are the poetry booklets "Poetic Notebooks" which he published in 1936. Together with Takis Papatsonis, Kalas was the first translator of T. S. Eliot into Greek. Kallas’s theoretical reflection began within the realm of orthodox Marxism, gradually leading him to a more eclectic view of socialism, influenced by Freud’s psychoanalytic theory. A representative work of his thought is the essay "Foyers d’incendie", published in Paris in 1938. It was here that he first used the name Nicolas Calas, under which he contributed to the publications "View", "Possibilities", "Tiger’s Eye", “Art News”, “Art International”, “Arts Magazine”, “Art in America”, “Art Forum”, “XX Siecle”, “Colloquio”, and others. He was awarded the First State Prize for Poetry in 1977 for the collection “Nikitas Rantos Street”. For further biographical details on Nikolas Kalas, see Argyriou, Alex., “Nikitas Rantos”, World Biographical Dictionary 9a. Athens, Athens Publishing, 1988, Argyriou, Alexandros, “Successive Readings of Greek Surrealists”. Athens, Gnosi, 1983 and Sarris, Kyriakos, "Foreword to Nikola Kalas" in the volume "Art in the Age of Risk and Other Essays by Nikola Kalas"; trans. Andreas Pappas. Athens, Agra, 1997.