Aegina

Painted in August and September of 1974, as indicated by the artist’s signature in the lower right, “Aegina” is an ode to the island that became Yannis Moralis’ second home. The painting marked the beginning of construction on his summer residence in the Plakakia area of Aegina, designed by architect Aris Konstantinidis. The house’s framing of the landscape—its windows turned into living tableaux—resonates in the painting’s structure and spatial logic. The influence of Konstantinidis is subtly embedded in the painting’s framing logic. As the architect once wrote, he aimed to create “large frames of landscape for the resident–observer, who is both inside and outside the house.” The design is the outcome of “fixing the gaze in landscapes far or near” (‘Experiences and Incidents: An Autobiographical Narrative,’ Hestia, 1992).

From his studio window, Moralis watched the steady rhythm of ferries coming and going: the “Afaia,” the “Aegina,” the perpetual choreography of arrivals and departures in the island’s port. “Aegina” captures this movement with both intimacy and abstraction. Against a continuous field of blue, suggesting the fusion of sea and sky, two figures dominate the canvas: a small white form and a large black form, each moving in opposite directions and extending beyond the edges of the composition. Their verticality echoes ship masts or hulls reflected on the surface of water. Beyond its lyrical abstraction, “Aegina” may also be read as a visual reflection on a pivotal historical moment. Painted in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Greek military junta and the transition to democracy known as the Metapolitefsi, the work has been interpreted as a symbol of cautious forward movement—a turn toward an uncertain but hopeful future, marked by continuity and rupture.

A later evolution of this painting took sculptural form in 2004. In 2016, to mark the centenary of Moralis’ birth, the untitled sculpture was installed in the main port of Aegina. It now stands opposite the Nikolaou Mansion, a permanent part of the landscape it once reimagined in paint.