“My uncle was an artist to the core, dedicated to his craft and an incredible workaholic. Aegina’s house was primarily his place of work, and he usually didn’t invite many people. Depending on who was walking, he limited what prying eyes could see. Only his friends and colleagues entered the laboratory, and here was a smaller space, a few square meters, which he called “the abyss.” There were several easels, a table at which he began sketching his work, paints, crayons and a bed.

We are talking to ceramist Christina Moralis, niece of leading visual artist Yannis Moralis, and our conversation is on the phone from Aegina. From that famous atelier-residence, which inextricably linked the name and work of Moralis with the island, here, among others, he created his large abstract works. Traces of his presence in the house are still clearly visible, like stains of his paint on the floor.

The area where Morali’s laboratory in Aegina is located is called Plakakia, near the city’s Archaeological Museum. Two hundred meters from Kazantzakis Street, in a large estate, unnoticed by the crowds of the main street, the architect Aris Konstantinides designed a building for his artist friend, which housed what for many years was his second home. .

Aegina became the artist’s second home. From the first visit, he remembered Preveza, where he spent the summer of his childhood. That’s how he connected with her emotionally and along the way discovered “her amazing light,” as he often said. He visited his summer residence on Aegina every year during Holy Week and returned to his studio on Deinocratus Street in October.

“Like the shell of a tortoise carrying its home,” he remarked of such a building, “this studio apartment offered him everything he could want from a summer life: a huge space to work, a bedroom to relax, which can be reached. up nine wide concrete steps, and a smaller space—the only one with a sea view—to accommodate one more guest.

Aegina became the artist’s second home. From the first visit, he remembered Preveza, where he spent the summer of his childhood.

The residence rises on the foundation. Its faces are defined by walls separated by gaps. Konstantinidis, an intellectual architect, wrote of these voids: “They create a large landscape frame for the occupant-observer, both inside and outside the house. The alternation of stone partitions superimposed on each other enhances the fixation of the gaze on distant or near landscapes.

The building was completed in 1978 and the artist, according to his niece, never interfered with a friend’s plans. “You don’t interfere with the artist’s work,” he commented. At that time, the famous “Aegina group” was also established on the island. The artist’s friends, Nikos Nikolaou, Christos Capralos, Alekos Spanoudis, gathered in the evenings after work at the house of their neighbor Nikolaou, chatting, laughing and arguing until dawn.

The garden is now, as then, full of olive trees. Now the house belongs to the artist’s son Konstantinos, also an artist and poet, who lives in Paris. The immediate plans of the Society for the Study, Research and Promotion of Modern Greek Art – Workshop of Yiannis Moralis, of which Konstantinos is a member, is to use the workshop of the great visual artist. The atelier has opened to the public once in 2020, and this year it will host young and old at two events.

“He loved Aegina more than Athens,” Mrs. Morali says when we ask her about the place the house held in his heart. “At least that’s what I came up with from the time he spent here. He last visited in the summer of 2009. I greeted my friends before leaving. He locked the house as usual and returned to Athens. He died a few months later.”

“The Colored Notebook of Giannis”, 2/9: A plot performance about the work and life of the artist. “Conversations”, 3/9. A performance that explores the process of creating a painting through a choreographic composition. As part of the 13th Aegina Fistiki Fest.