ATHENS – The work “Painting Homage to Palingenesis, Frieze in 12 Paintings for the Greek Revolution of 1821” by artist Anna Filini was created over 15 months, since June 2020. The paintings are now on view at the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation in Athens, November 2-18.

“I wished to create a work of painting for the 200 years since the Revolution of 1821 as a need for creation, born out of the events and the significance of this revolution, the only Revolution in Europe that managed to succeed, after the French Revolution, in the early 19th century,” Filini says in her book, set to be released in early November by Asini publications.

Evangelia Diamantopoulou, Assistant Professor – Art Historian, Department of Communication and Media at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens writes: “Τhe series of paintings by Filini interacts with the protagonists, the events and the places of the mobilization of ’21, in the context of historical time and human communication. It consists of 12 compositions in which Greek fighters of 1821 parade along with Theseus, Simon Bolivar, and General Stefanos Sarafis, Greek and foreign poets, and Domenikos Theotokopoulos, also known as El Greco. Among them, anonymous women from Missolonghi, Chios, and Cyprus are mourning, a woman from Souli fights while holding her baby in her arms, a nun accompanies Theodoros Kolokotronis, and the personified Liberty of Eugene Delacroix addresses the greeting of the French flag to the Greek one, conveying the message of the enlightenment. At the same time, the Philhellenes Byron and Meyer, the Minotaur and the ‘cursed’ serpent appear. Finally, Ioannis Kapodistrias comes to define the operation of the independent Greek state. The history of the Greek liberation struggle is written in a Greece that extends from the coasts of Asia Minor and Cyprus to the islands.”

The 12 paintings in the series are:

Pain. 1) Rigas Feraios, Adamantios Korais and the new Greece with Eugene Delacroix’s Liberty in the background, 2) Minotaur, Theseus and Theodoros Kolokotronis, 3) Odysseas Androutsos, Simon Bolivar and a soldier from the 1940 war, 4) Antonios Oikonomou and the declaration of the Revolution in Hydra, 5) Kolokotronis imprisoned in Hydra in 1825, 6) The First National Assembly at Epidaurus, 7) Chios Massacre 1822, Burning of Smyrna 1922, Invasion of Cyprus 1974, 8) Canaris returns with his boat after the burning of the Ottoman Flagship, 9) Psarra after the destruction, 10) Missolonghi, the glorious “little threshing floor”, 11) Georgios Karaiskakis, mortally wounded, 12) Public ceremony after the Liberation of Greece, the National Anthem, set to music, is played.

The exhibition is free and open to the public and runs November 2-18 at the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation, 206 Piraeus Street, Ground Floor: Red Wall, in Athens. Hours: 6-8 PM daily.