Aegean

“Aegean” belongs to a group of hinged diptychs featuring female figures that Yannis Moralis created between 1971 and 1972. Like “Girl Painting” and “Girl Undressing,” this work is composed of two tall, narrow canvases joined by hinges. The painting emerged as the culmination of a creative sequence begun earlier that year: “Girl Painting” was exhibited in March 1972 at his third-ever solo show, the first at Zoumboulakis Gallery; it was followed by “Girl Undressing,” produced on Aegina in the summer, and finally “Aegean” in early November. Based on preparatory drawings and the artist’s signature, we know “Aegean” was painted within the span of two days—November 3 and 4, 1972—at Pikermi. The composition presents a stark, white female figure, arms raised, legs spread. Her long hair flows upward, caught in the wind, transformed into a grey sail, a leaf, or an angel’s wing. The blue strip behind her delineates the horizon, suggesting the sea. In the catalog for the 1972 exhibition, Odysseas Elytis described Moralis’ vocabulary of form and color in these semi-figurative, or semi-abstract, paintings as a “pared-down alphabet.”

“Aegean” evokes more than geography; it invokes a cultural and emotional landscape. For Moralis, the Aegean meant woman, eros, mystery, voyage, balance, harmony, the interplay of light and shadow—the simplicity of his forms and the clarity of his color find kinship with the abstraction and purity of Cycladic art. However, the artist avoided assigning fixed interpretations to his work. Quoting George Seferis, he readily reminded viewers: “The interpretation of any work is the interpretation of ourselves—not of the one who created it, but of the one who gazes upon it, listens to it, or reads it.”