To the Bavarian officer Karl Kratscheizen and the portraits he created in 1826, we owe the figures of the leaders of the Greek revolution, known to us from school textbooks. Inspired by Kolokotronis, Makrygiannis, and other leaders of Kratzaizen, Zacharias Arvanitis created the same faces almost two centuries later in wood, giving them a sense of sacredness in relief. For two exhibitions organized in National Gallery by Jota Sikkas and Nikos Vatopoulos.
Sakis Ioannidis

Iota Sikkas

You will see them hung in the great hall on the first floor of the National Gallery: they are small pieces of paper, spoiled by time. It’s been, you see, about 200 years since Karl Kratseisen traveled between his native Bavaria and rebellious Greece. They depict the leaders of the revolutionary struggle, with whom the lieutenant and amateur painter managed to meet in 1826 and 1827 in Nafplion, Aegina, Poros, Damala (i.e. Troizen). He painted them one by one and asked them to sign their portraits.

Kolokotronis has just left in a hurry, half signed. On the contrary, Nikitaras is a calligrapher. Topazis writes in Latin elements. Nicodemus also reveals his status: a smut – with the letter “i”. And Karaiskakis does not sign at all. Death overtook him, and his portrait was never completed.

You look at these small leaves and remain fascinated by the simplicity and naturalness of the portraits that immortalize the military leaders with the weariness of years and, above all, with the struggle they went through.

The era in which they were created is also of particular importance: “The Messolongians fell. Ibrahim thrashed a devastated country,” wrote author and art critic Pantelis Prevelakis. “Greek leaders were torn apart by civil strife. The people were depressed. No one could predict what a happy turn the affairs of Greece would take after the Navarino naval battle. This atmosphere of unease can be seen in the expressions on their faces.”

Returning to Munich in 1827, Krazeisen lithographed the plans. This is how the idealized forms that we saw in school textbooks were created. “Lithography was possible only to give Kratseisen’s drawings a significant exaggeration that is not in the original,” remarked a hundred years later, an outstanding thinker and writer of the time, and also at that time the director of the Art Gallery. , Zaharias Papantoniou.

And here’s why: “Because lithography represented public opinion in Europe. With many shades and decorations, with a wide use of tones, with a “floating” and somewhat ghostly – all this is characteristic of this romantic art that originated in the early 19th century – lithography gave us heroes in the light that the fog in which ordinary people saw them imagination”.

These lithographs, rather than the original drawings, supported the image that the newly formed Greek state aspired to. This was done much more by other important works, especially by Georgios Margaritis and Theodoros Vryzakis. The son of a wrestler hanged by the Turks when the revolution was declared, Vryzakis was sent after being released by Otho to study in Munich. His writings sought ideological exploitation by the newly created state.

Here, however, is a great work that is not subordinated to these goals: In The Apotheosis of Athanasius Diakos, Konstantinos Parthenis combined Byzantine iconography with the Cubist style. Even if it was a revolution.

Nikos Vatopoulos

Zacharias Arvanitis, a student of Yiannis Moralis, an artist deeply connected to history and place, unfolds a series of portraits of the heroes from 1821 at the National Gallery, where he donated them. They will be in the public eye for a little longer (until April 30), and these days, in connection with the national anniversary, they again challenge our gaze.

This is a special exhibition that synthesizes in unbroken unity the works of Zacharias Arvanitis, engraved on artificial wood, works of mental grandeur and visual density. These “megalographies” of wrestlers, as Marina Lambrakis-Plaka called them to emphasize the moral strength of the heroes, draw inspiration from the designs of Karl Krazeisen and other philhellenes, but in this case they turn into niches of holiness. They are more psychographs than images. Zacharias Arvanitis, with his silent but eloquent world, excites the national subconscious, giving direct content to idealized forms, digging out the depths fertilized by coherent narratives.

The figures of Zacharias Arvanitis form a great unity (not all of them are shown in the exhibition) and are 108 x 80 cm in size. They form an archetypal mythology. “And you are surprised to discover the unprecedented “county architecture”, now that the familiar fez or scarfs have been removed,” writes the curator of the exhibition Katerina Tavantsi. “Referring to many historical sources in order to restore as accurately as possible the shape of the skull or the possible existence of hair in its previously hidden parts, looking for a facial balance, the artist manages to describe in impressively new faces that are familiar, but which are rediscovered upon an unexpected meeting with them. “.

And indeed, Zacharias Arvanitis, portraying a personal hero, turns the generally accepted images. Psychographers. It generates deviations, which are taken almost as a relief. “Zaharias Arvanitis’s interest in the fighters of 1821 dates back to his student years, when his teacher, the sculptor Theodoros Papagiannis, asked him to pose for the statue of the leader Aggelis Goviou,” comments architect Vangelis Saitis, who is familiar with Zacharias Arvanite’s work. . He points out that these forms are approached “with the holiness of the hagiographer”.

Modest and essential, Zaharias Arvanitis elevates the heroes and makes them companions without losing the haze of myth.