Venice 2024 – Hellenic Heads – An Exhibition by Greek – American Sculptor George Petrides

 

 

The Exhibition, “Hellenic Heads”, a Personal Exploration of Greek History and Culture over 2,500 Years, by renowned Greek-American sculptor George Petrides, is heading for Venice!

Six huge heads, each one standing over two meters tall (including pedestal) and representing six periods of Greek history; Classical Greek Period (510 BC to 323 BC), Byzantine Period (330 AD to 1453 AD), Greek War of Independence (1821 to 1829, The destruction of Smyrna (1922), The Nazi Occupation and Greek Civil War (1941 to 1949) and The Present Looking to the Future, will be on show from the 15^th of April until the 30^th of November.

 

 

 “Hellenic Heads” is a traveling exhibition; the first stop was the Greek Embassy in Washington, D.C. for Europe Day 2022 and it then visited the National Hellenic Museum in Chicago.

 Venice is the exhibition’s fifth stop, after which there will be three more venues in Europe and Asia, making for a grand total of eight exhibitions worldwide.

 

George Petrides

 From Successful Wall Street Investment Banker to “Globally Recognized Sculptor”!

 

 

George Petrides, born in Athens, Greece, in 1964, moved to New York with his family when he was three years old.

He went on to study Classical Greek literature, philosophy and history at Harvard College and Cambridge in the 1980s.

Petrides established a successful career as an investment banker on Wall Street, however, his passion was art and all his spare time was taken up with drawing, painting and sculpture classes at the New York Studio School, the Art Students League in New York and later, at the Academie de la Grande Chaumière, an art school in Paris, France.

By 2017 Petrides had decided the time had come to dedicate himself to making art full time.

 

 

Named as a “globally recognized sculptor” by Forbes in 2022, Petrides’ work can be seen worldwide, from public sculptures in Greece and Turkey marking the centennial of the destruction of Smyrna in 1922, to a bronze head in the refurbished Tiffany’s flagship store at 727 Fifth Avenue, New York.

 

“Hellenic Heads”

A Sculptural Project on Six Significant Periods of Greek History

By Greek-American Sculptor George Petrides

 

 

Inspired by Greece’s rich cultural past and to coincide with the bicentennial celebration of the Greek War of Independence (1821) and the centennial anniversary of the Smyrna Catastrophe of 1922 when one of the wealthiest cities of the Ottoman Empire, on the Aegean coast of Anatolia, inhabited mostly by Greeks, Jews and Armenians, went up in flames, Greek sculptor, George Petrides, created six huge busts standing over two meters tall, each inspired by a period of Greek history.

For each time period, Petrides studied many works by famous artist and then modelled each head on one of his family members; some living, others from photographs and memory.

 

1. Classical Greek Period (510 BC to 323 BC)

Hellenic Head – Thalia – The Foundation of Western Civilization

 

 

To represent Classical Greece, Petrides chose Thalia, the ancient Greek muse of comedy, after being inspired by a statue of her discovered in 1775 during the excavation of a Roman villa in Tivoli, Italy, now in the Vatican Museum.

 

 

After consulting a black and white photograph of his mother in Greece at the age of around twenty, the head of Thalia took on the characteristics of his mother.

 

Sculpture completed – 2022

Sculpture Medium – Mixed media including brass and custom patinas

Sculpture Dimensions – 90 cm height x 53 cm diameter

35.4 inch height x 21.0 inch diameter

Model – Panayota Papaioannou (maiden name)

Petrides’ relationship – Mother from B/W photos around 18 years old, Pireus, Greece

Petrides seeks to convey – Inspiration, thoughtfulness, classical beauty

Sculptural Precedent – Thalia Muse of Comedy

Roman copy of Greek original of Classical Period

Precedent Work Held By – Vatican Museums, Rome

 

“As I worked on the piece, the only thing that remained was the hairstyle and the crown around the hairstyle, but the features of the face changed to resemble my mother at that age.”

George Petrides

 

Classical Greece – The Golden Age of Greece:

 The Most Important Time in Greek History

 

 

Classical Greece, the 5th and 4th centuries BC, was a period of around 200 years when Greece, emerging from the Dark Ages, was gradually gaining more and more independence from the Persians and whilst the people of the Peloponnese were busy fighting the First and Second Peloponnesian Wars, democracy was thriving in Athens.

It was a time of cultural growth; eventually, mathematics, science, architecture, sculpture, theatre, literature, philosophy and politics of Greece would be motivating the whole of Western civilization and later would have a powerful influence over the Roman Empire.

This is the Greece of the philosopher, Socrates, whose method of questioning is still used today in schools and universities

Aristotle, a student of Plato and one time tutor to Alexander the Great, made important contributions to philosophy and intellectual thought.

Greek theater was also invented during this time and playwrights such as Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Euripides, were the flavour of the day, filling the ancient theatres to the brim; their plays are still performed today.

If theatre was not your thing then the Olympic Games were a good alternative.

The classical Greek era ended after Philip II managed to unite the Greek world against the Persian Empire, which was then conquered over a period of thirteen years, during the wars waged against them by Alexander the Great, Philip’s son, who died in 323 BC.

The Classical Age was followed by the Hellenistic period.

 

2. Byzantine Period (330 AD to 1453 AD)

Hellenic Head – Archon – Establishing Christianity

 

 

 To portray the Byzantine Period of Greece, Petrides looked to Rome and “The Father of Christianity” in the face of Constantine the Great, an exceptional leader, or, to use the ancient Greek word; Archon.

Two sculptured heads inspired Petrides to create the “Hellenic Head” named “Archon” which portrays the Byzantine Period of Greece; the head of Constantine the Great in the Capitoline Museums in Rome and a smaller marble head of the same Emperor housed in The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

 

 

 

Sculpture Completed – 2022

Sculpture Medium – Mixed media including bronze and custom patinas

Sculpture Dimensions – 97 cm height x 58 cm diameter

38.0 inch height x 23.0 inch diameter

Model – Capt. Christos Petrides

Petrides’ relationship – Father from photos as sea captain, around age 40

Petrides seeks to convey – Leadership, clear vision ahead

Sculptural Precedent – Colossal head of Constantine the Great (313-324)

Precedent Work Held By – Capitoline Museums, Rome and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

 

“As I worked on my version of the sculpture, I found that it took on characteristics of my father. The name, Archon, could be said to be a leader or a noble person and that is how I think of my father’s character. Sadly, he passed away in 2017, but I’ve captured, I think, some of his qualities in this work.”

George Petrides

 

According to Greek legend, the story of Byzantine Greece begins in 667 B.C. when Byzas of Megara, established a Greek trading post, named Byzantion, complete with its own natural built-in defense system.

As Rome and its Empire, established in around 530 B.C., began its decline, Byzantium rose to power when it was chosen as the empire’s new capital after Emperor Diocletian in 330 A.D., split the empire into two, creating both a western and an eastern empire.

Byzantium was renamed Nova Roma, or “New Rome”, by Emperor Constantine the Great, (c. 272 – 337), son of Saint Helen and the first emperor to convert to Christianity, which led to the ensuing Christianization of the Roman Empire.

 

3. Greek War of Independence (1821 to 1829):

 Known to 19th Century Greeks Simply as “The Struggle”

Hellenic Head – Heroines of 1821 – Female Leadership

Female Leaders of “The Struggle”

 

 

George Petrides was fascinated by three women who had major roles in the Greek revolution; he would state that “these women were not merely figure-heads but active participants on the frontlines”.

These heroines along with his fiancé, Eleftheria (“Liberty”) Gkoufa, another strong woman, inspired Petrides to create the “Hellenic Head” named “Female Leadership”, which symbolized the period of the Greek War of Independence (1821 to 1829).

His fiancé at the time, Eleftheria (“Liberty”) Gkoufa, was the model for the sculpture.

 

Laskarina Bouboulina

 

 

 Laskarina Bouboulina, maybe the most well-known of the war heroines, was born in 1771 in Constantinople, daughter of a captain from the island of Hydra.

She survived two husbands, the second a rich captain and ship-owner whose fortune Bouboulina risked to aid the cause of Greek Independence.

Following the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence she commanded a fleet of ships from the island of Spetses, most famously the campaign during the siege of Nafplion.

She was killed on 22 May 1825, during a family feud.

In 2018 she was granted the title of Rear Admiral in the Hellenic Navy.

 

Manto Mavrogenous

 

 

Manto Mavrogenous, another wealthy naval heroine (1796 – 1848) was a Greek princess and heroine of the Greek War of Independence who contributed her fortune for the Hellenic cause.

She was born in Trieste, then in the Habsburg monarchy, now part of Italy and was the daughter of the merchant and member of the Filiki Eteria, Nikolaos Mavrogenis and his wife, Zacharati Chatzi Bati.

 In 1809, she moved to Paros with her family and later, in 1818, after her father’s death, left for Tinos and later Mykonos, to ask the leaders of the island to join the revolution.

She equipped and manned two ships at her own expense, with which she chased off the pirates who attacked Mykonos and other islands of Cyclades.

 On 22 October 1822, under her leadership, the Mykonians fended off the Ottoman Turks, who had landed on the island.

Mavrogenous also decked out 150 men to campaign in the Peloponnese and sent forces and financial support to Samos, when the island was threatened by the Turks and sent another fifty men to the Peloponnese to help in the Siege of Tripolitsa.

She also set up a fleet of six ships and an infantry of sixteen companies, with fifty men each and took part in the battle of Karystos in 1822.

There was seemingly no end to her generosity, when the Ottoman fleet appeared in the Cyclades, Manto returned to Tinos, sold her jewelry and equipped 200 men who then went on to fight the enemy.

She moved to Nafplio in 1823, to be in the midst of the struggle and it was at this time she met and became engaged to Demetrios Ypsilantis, a Greek army officer, member of the Filiki Eteria and the younger brother of Alexander Ypsilantis, who played an important role in the Greek War of Independence.

Manto Mavrogenous was soon famous all over Europe for her beauty and bravery.

After the war Ioannis Kapodistrias awarded her the rank of the Lieutenant General and bestowed upon her a house in Nafplio.

 

Domna Visvizi

 

 

After the death of her husband, Domna Visvizi, a noblewoman from Thrace said to be a skilled and respected naval commander, took command of their warship, the Kalomoira and its crew and continued to fight in the war.

 The Kalomoira not only took part in battles but also transported food and ammunition to the soldiers on Skiathos and the forces of Odysseas Androutsos on the mainland.

Androutsos, a prominent figure of the Greek War of Independence, later wrote that his forces would have perished without Visvizi’s aid.

However, when the war ended, Domna Visvizi , in dire financial straits, was repeatedly denied financial aid from the government  and In 1845 she moved to Piraeus in Athens, where she lived in a small hut next to the sea, dying in poverty in 1850 at the age of 67.

For decades, historians disregarded the importance of these war heroines.

Recent revisions of the facts, however, have resulted in a better understanding of the crucial roles they played in the war.

 

Sculpture Completed – 2022

Sculpture Medium – Mixed media including bronze and custom patinas

Sculpture Dimensions – 88 cm height x 64 cm diameter

34.5 inch height x 25.0 inch diameter

Model – Eleftheria (“Liberty”) Gkoufa

Petrides’ relationship – Colleague, posed 2021

Petrides seeks to convey – Strength, resilience, defiance

Sculptural Precedent – Misc. statues of the Heroines throughout Greece

Precedent Work Held By – Public squares around Greece

 

“I found someone close to me, whose name is Eleftheria, which in Greek means Freedom, which I took to a sign that this was the right model for a fighter in a war of independence. This piece is not specifically one of the three leaders, but is meant to embody the characteristics of these women.”

George Petrides

 

 Greek War of Independence (1821 to 1829)

 

 

Greece had been part of the Ottoman Empire for nearly 400 years, since 1453 and in order to keep the Greeks under control in inaccessible, mountainous regions often inhabited by “Klephts”, (Thief or brigand, warlike mountain-folk) the “Armatolikia” were created.

These forces, known as palikaria or armatoloi, were the only real threat to the Ottomans.

Theodoros Kolokotronis, a Greek general, gathered up a gang of the toughest palikaria and formed a sort of irregular army which he led against the Ottomans.

Kolokotronis, archistrategos, meaning  the commander-in-chief of the army, who was fifty years old at the time, became known as “O Geros tou Morea” ; The Elder of Morea (the Peloponnese) and was one of the most notable heroes of the Greek revolution.

Four of the most famous “Armatoloi”, or “Palikaria”, initially employed by Ali Pasha (Ottomans), who rebelled and fought for Greece in the Revolution are: Markos Botsaris, Georgios Karaiskakis, Odysseas Androutsos and Athanasios Diakos.

 

With a Little Help from My Friends

 

 

The Greeks, helped by Europe, who were sympathetic towards Greece, because of the contribution of so much of their culture to the western world, revolted against Ottoman rule.

Fighting for Greece, along with so many great Greek soldiers, was the great Philhellene Lord Byron, a poet, one of the major British romantics.

The Filiki Eteria, a secret nineteenth century organization, the purpose of which was to overthrow the Ottomans, initiated the Greek revolution, led by Alexander Ypsilantis, in the spring of 1821.

The Filiki Eteria’s emblem had the letters “ΗΕΑ” and “ΗΘΣ”, these are the letters of the words “Ή ΕλευθερίΑ” “Ή ΘάνατοΣ” which means Freedom or Death, which became the motto for Greece, still in use today.

After nine long and brutal years, the Greeks triumphed over the Ottomans during the Greek War of Independence (1821 to 1829).

Greece was finally recognized as an independent state; the First Hellenic Republic, governed by Ioannis Kapodistrias.

Under the London Protocol of February 1830 and with the Treaty of Constantinople in 1832, borders of the new state and Otto of Bavaria, who, after the assassination of Kapodistrias on 27 September 1831, became king, were recognized.

 

4. Destruction of Smyrna (1922)

Hellenic Head – The Refugee – To Lose and to Rebuild

 

 

The Destruction of Smyrna is depicted by Petrides with his sculpture The Refugee (2022), inspired by two works; Donatello’s  Habacu and The Deposition (The Florentine Pietà) by Michelangelo.

 

 

 

However, it was mainly modeled after Petrides’ grandmother, who was nineteen years old when she lost her home during the Smyrna Catastrophe in 1922 but escaped the fires and became a refuge.

The sculpture characterizes the struggle she faced in having to rebuild her life.

 

Sculpture Completed – 2022

Sculpture Medium – Mixed media including bronze and black wax

Sculpture Dimensions – 86 cm height x 65 cm diameter

34.0 inch height x 25.5 inch diameter

Model – Maria Blizioti (maiden name)

Petrides’ relationship – Grandmother, imagined at age 19 arriving in Piraeus, Greece from Smyrna

Petrides seeks to convey – Shock of losing her world, dignity in accepting and rebuilding

Sculptural Precedent – The Florentine Pieta (1555) by Michelangelo and Habacuc (1423-1425) by Donatello

Precedent Work Held By – Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Florence

 

“Unlike the three earlier periods, for this one I was also able to use surviving photos, footage and firsthand accounts of the event. I had personal knowledge from my grandmother who escaped Smyrna and recreated her life in Greece. Her brother was a soldier in the Greek- Turkish War, and his diary has actually been published so that was a source for me as well.”

George Petrides

 

The Smyrna Catastrophe 1922

 

 

On September 13th, 1922, Smyrna (now Izmir), one of the wealthiest cities of the Ottoman Empire, on the Aegean coast of Anatolia, inhabited mostly by Greeks, Jews and Armenians, went up in flames.

Greek forces, which had occupied the city for the past three years, retreated under attack from the Turks, marking the end of the Greco-Turkish War, bringing about the largest compulsory population exchange in history and the creation of the Turkish Republic.

This tragedy came to be known as the “Smyrna Catastrophe” or “The Asia Minor Disaster”.

The  Greco – Turkish War commenced, when Greek forces, later joined by local Greek and Armenian untrained volunteers, landed in Smyrna, on 15th of May 1919.

On 26th August 1922, Turkey set in motion a brutal attack “The Turkish Great Offensive” crushing the Greek forces.

Defeated, the Greek forces evacuated Smyrna on the 8th of September 1922.

On the 9th of September, the Turkish Nationalist forces, led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, entered Smyrna and raised the Turkish flag, signifying the Liberation of Izmir.

Four days later, on the 13th of September 1922, Smyrna, a cosmopolitan city, with a larger Greek population than Athens, the Greek capital, was burning.

The fire started in the Armenian quarter of the city and raged until September 22nd, resulting in the deaths of 10,000 to 125,000 Greek and Armenians.

With the war over, peace negotiations began; Britain, France and Italy, along with other nations, came to the conclusion that, to avoid the deaths of more innocent civilians, a compulsory population exchange was the answer.

On October 16, 1922, Greek statesman, Eleftherios Venizelos, in a letter to the League of Nations, requested an exchange of Greek and Turkish populations.

The exchange involved at least 1.6 million people; 1,221,489 Greek Orthodox from Asia Minor and 355,000–400,000 Muslims from Greece.

 

5. The 1940s – WWII – Nazi Occupation of Greece and Greek Civil War

Hellenic Head – Man of Two Wars – The Greek and the Jew

 

 

Petrides’ “Man of Two Wars”, a sort of self-portrait sculpture, represents the horrendous time of the Nazi occupation of Greece and the Greek Civil War in the 1940s and is based on Auguste Rodin’s sculpture of Pierre de Weissant, one of the six Burghers of Calais.

 

 

Sculpture Completed – 2022

Sculpture Medium – Mixed media including iron and custom patinas

Sculpture Dimensions – 88 cm height x 56 cm diameter

34.5 inch height x 22.0 inch diameter

Model – George Petrides

Petrides’ relationship – Self-portrait

Petrides seeks to convey – Greek Jew under the Nazis; common Greek during the Greek Civil War

Sculptural Precedent – Pierre de Wiessant (1887) one of the six Burghers of Calais by Auguste Rodin – Museo Soumaya at Plaza Carso  – Mexico

Precedent Work Held By – Many museums throughout the world

 

“I also drew on tales I had heard from my parents, who were teenagers in the 1940s in Greece, as well as my own reading about the period. I wanted to capture not the official headlines of the generals and the battles but rather the experience of the everyday Greek civilian: The privation, the famine, and the horror of that decade, played out in personal history.”

George Petrides

 

Occupation of Greece

 

 

The occupation of Greece by the Axis Powers began in April 1941after Nazi Germany invaded Greece in order to help its ally, Italy, in their ongoing war that had started in October 1940.

 Following the conquest of Crete, by June 1941, the whole of Greece was occupied.

The occupation of the mainland lasted until Germany and its ally Bulgaria withdrew in early October 1944, with Crete and some other Aegean islands being surrendered to the Allies by German garrisons in May and June 1945, after the end of World War II in Europe.

Fascist Italy declared war and invaded Greece in October 1940 but had been pushed back by the Hellenic Army into neighbouring Albania, which at the time was protected by Italy.

While most of the Hellenic Army was located on the Albanian front lines to defend against Italian counter-attacks, a German campaign took place from April to June 1941, resulting in Greece being defeated and occupied.

 The Greek government went into exile and an Axis collaborationist government was established in its place.

Greece was divided into occupation zones run by the Axis powers, with the Germans administering the most important regions of the country, including Athens, Thessaloniki and ssomeof the Aegean Islands.

Along with the loss of economic capacity, an estimated 7-11% of Greece’s civilian population died as a result of the occupation.

In Athens, 40,000 civilians died from starvation and tens of thousands more died from reprisals by Nazis and their collaborators.

The Jewish population of Greece was nearly wiped out; most of those who died were deported to Auschwitz and Treblinka.

 

 

The Greek Resistance was formed during this occupation; groups launched guerrilla attacks against the occupying powers, fought against collaborationist Security Battalions and set up spy networks.

 

Greek Civil War – 1946 to 1949

 

 

 By late 1943 the resistance groups were fighting amongst themselves and by the end of the occupation of the mainland in October 1944, Greece was so politically divided, that it soon led to the outbreak of the Greek Civil War.

The civil war gave many Nazi collaborators the opportunity to escape punishment because of their anti-communism and to eventually rule postwar Greece after the communist defeat.

The Greek Resistance killed 21,087 Axis soldiers (17,536 Germans, 2,739 Italians, 1,532 Bulgarians) and captured 6,463 (2,102 Germans, 2,109 Italians, 2,252 Bulgarians), compared to the death of 20,650 Greek partisans and an unknown number captured.

 

Liberation

 

German troops evacuated Athens on 12 October 1944 and by the end of the month, they had withdrawn from mainland Greece.

The first British troops arrived in Athens on 14 October 1944 and four days later, the exiled Greek government returned to Athens.

Squabbling between the monarchist right and the republican and communist left soon broke out.

On 1 December, the government ordered all guerrilla groups to be disarmed and on the 2^nd the six EAM (Greek National Liberation Front) ministers in the Government of National Unity resigned in protest.

A new government was formed by Themistoklis Sofoulis and meanwhile, the British ordered all ELAS ( Greek People’s Liberation Army) units to leave Athens within seventy-two hours and on the following day declared martial law.

The clashes ended on the night of 5 January and ELAS began a general withdrawal from Athens.

 

Aftermath

 

 

Negotiations between the newly established Greek government and EAM ended at 12 February 1945, providing a temporary respite from open warfare but Greece was politically divided and in ruins.

Greece’s recovery from the devastation of the World War II and Axis occupation lagged far behind that of the rest of Europe.

Around 8% of the Greek population of about 7 million had died during the conflicts and the occupation.

 Sanitation conditions were dreadful and the lack of medicines meant malaria and tuberculosis were rife.

A quarter of all Greek the villages had been burned to the ground, over 100,000 buildings destroyed or heavily damaged and Nearly 700,000 of the Greek population were refugees.

 

6. The Present Looking to the Future

Hellenic Head – Kore – Our hopes for Our Children

 

 

After delving into the darker periods of Greek history, Petrides wanted to finish his series of six sculptures on a positive note by giving a ray of hope to the future.

 Having had his daughter Sophia sit for studies from the age of ten to twelve, he decided to use a recent study to create the “Hellenic Head” Kore.

Kore, (in Greek κόρη), means daughter and maiden, it is also the modern term given to a type of free-standing ancient Greek sculpture of the Archaic period depicting young female figures.

 

 

Inspired by Jean-Antoine Houdon’s white marble bust of five-Year-old Louise Brongniart, daughter of the  architect Alexandre Théodore Brongniart, Petrides pictured the sculpture as conveying the optimism of a young girl for her future and that of her country and people too.

 

 

Sculpture Completed – 2022

Sculpture Medium – Mixed media including brass and custom patinas

Sculpture Dimensions – 75 cm height x 55 cm

 9.5 inch height x 21.5 inch diameter

Model – Sofia Petrides

Petrides’ relationship – Daughter, posed 2022 (age 12)

Petrides seeks to convey – Optimism and innocence

Sculptural Precedent – Louise Brongniart (1772-1845) daughter of architect Alexandre Théodore Brongniart (1739-1813) – by Jean-Antoine Houdon – 1777

Precedent Work Held By – Many examples including The Louvre, The Metropolitan Museum

Of Art, New York, the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

 

”I was interested after exploring these dark periods of a nation’s history and a people’s history as to how they might be metabolized into something positive and include some optimism for the future.“

George Petrides

 

“Hellenic Heads” on view at the Hellenic Institute of Venice

 

 

The exhibition is hosted by The Embassy of Greece in Rome and The Hellenic Institute of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Studies of Venice in cooperation with the Greek Orthodox Community of Venice and with the support of The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Italy.

The six monumental busts will be exhibited in the courtyard of the Church of St. George of the Greeks (San Giorgio dei Greci), Castello 3412, Ponte dei Greci, next to The Hellenic Institute of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Studies of Venice, located a short distance from the Arsenale and St. Mark’s Square.

The exhibition will run daily from April 15 to April 28 and from May 8 to November 24, 2024, from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

 

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