Like sepia-painted medallions, small dedicated altarpieces that cement an emotional narrative, Minas Mavrikakis’s portraits of famous archaeologists are on display in the National Archaeological Museum café. Minas Mavrikakis, who has a long professional career in the business world, has devoted himself to visual creativity in recent years, demonstrating talent and imagination. The Pioneers Exhibition, directed and curated by Iris Kritikou, is an installation exhibition with 16 central portraits celebrating the contributions of leading figures in Greek archeology (from Pittakis, Pelecanos and Kavadias to Tulopa and Delivorria and from Schliemann to Semni Karousou). and Stefanos Miller). These are three-dimensional hybrid compositions of demonstrative verisimilitude with strong symbolism. The portraits are complemented by works on the theme of invisible workers or earth-moving tools.

This atmosphere is served by a sense of duty. The exhibition on this topic seems to grow out of the foundations of the National Archaeological Museum. “I have always imagined and still imagine the heroes of my life as a three-dimensional and living event, and in this way I try to convey it,” explains Minas Mavrikakis, emphasizing, among other things, that the conclusion due to the pandemic was for him a period of silence and creation . “Having enthusiastically researched modern Greek history and archeology in recent years, and simultaneously reading the relevant literature and diaries of excavations, I focus on different personalities each time. While talking with her, I subconsciously try to get inside and beyond the proposed image, to give her new dimensions and inner information. To make it possible to psychograph the discoverer chosen to draw, to listen to an unknown environment, to walk in the depths of a dark hinterland, to be present at a time when a hoe extracts something unique from the depths of history.

Exhibition of symbolic forms of spiritual radiation in the cafe of the National Archaeological Museum signed by Minas Mavrikakis.

This series of portraits (even suitable for a series of stamps on the theme of the pioneers of archeology) makes you think with its immediacy and easy expression of honor. Iris Kritikou characterizes the works as a “symbolic intangible gallery”. He sees in them works that “worked as hagiographies with symbols of achievement and life, and as vivid touching episodes of our recent history, as well as sources and prototypes of genuine artistic formations.”

Contemplating these sacred forms of archeology brought together makes one wonder how important it is to bring them back into the public debate. Their performance in the form given to them by Minas Mavrikakis is a trigger for broader reflections. The works will remain in the cafe of the National Archaeological Museum (under the coordination of Emilia Kugia) until 22 January.