Girl Painting

Among Moralis’ most iconic works, “Girl Painting” graced the cover of the catalog for his 1988 retrospective at the National Gallery in Athens. Like “Girl Undressing” (1972) and “Aegean” (1972), it is a diptych composed of two tall, narrow canvases joined by hinges, allowing the work to open and close like a book, to be in or out of view at will.

The concept for the painting originated from a quick sketch made, Moralis stated, while observing one of his students at the Athens School of Fine Arts, absorbed in her work at the easel. The color scheme—black, yellow, and red—evokes a childhood memory. As Moralis recalled in an interview with Fani-Maria Tsingakou (Benaki Museum, “Angels, Music, Poetry,” 2001, p. 117): “When I finished it and looked at it, the colors reminded me of something. As a child in Preveza, I used to watch the ships come into the harbor. Sometimes, a Yugoslav three-masted ship would appear. The crew disembarking looked like they had stepped out of a pirate film. The vessel was black, with a yellow stripe and a hint of red. I realized I had used those very colors in the painting. Experiences never leave you.”

The diptych format also shaped the composition: each panel retains a degree of autonomy while contributing to a unified visual narrative. One wonders, the anonymous nude girl at the center—what is she painting? A landscape? A ship? Like her fragmented body, the image on her easel is deliberately indistinct, becoming an extension of the overall composition.