Citazioni di Giorgio De Chirico | Arte e pensiero

• "Un'opera d'arte per divenire immortale deve sempre superare i limiti dell'umano senza preoccuparsi né del buon senso né della logica".

• "L'arte deve creare sensazioni sconosciute in passato; spogliare l'arte dal comune e dall'accettato... sopprimere completamente l'uomo quale guida o come mezzo per esprimere dei simboli, delle sensazioni, dei pensieri, liberare la pittura una volta per tutte dall'antropomorfismo... vedere ogni cosa, anche l'uomo, nella sua qualità di cosa.".

Apostolos Geralis | Genre painter

Apostolos Geralis /Απόστολος Γεραλής (1886-1983) was born on the island of Mytelene and died in Athens, Greece.

In 1896 he enrolled at The School of Fine Arts, Athens, where he studied painting under Dimitrios Geraniotis, Spyros Vikatos, Georgios Jakobides and Georgios Roilos.

Between 1910-1915 he held a teaching position at the Pancyprian Gymnasium, Nicosia and later, between 1919-1920 he continued his studies in Paris, at The Julian Academy.

Georgios Jakobides | Genre painter

Greek painter Γεώργιος Ιακωβίδης / Georgios Jakobides (1853-1932) founded and was the first curator of the National Gallery of Greece in Athens.

Georgios Jakobides was one of the main representatives of the Greek artistic movement of the Munich School.

He was one of the thirty "immortal" members of Athen’s Academy when firstly created, in 1926.

His paintings, over 200, are found in the National Gallery of Athens, private collections and in museums and art galleries around the world including art galleries in Germany and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Angelos Panayiotou, 1943 | Abstract painter

• "I would like my art to be an emotional and spiritual refuge.

I would like the image to be serene, peaceful, opening a path towards our inner salvation" - Angelos Panayiotou.

Άγγελος Παναγιώτου was born in Farkadona, Trikala, Greece.

In 1962 he enrolled at The School of Fine Arts, Athens, where he studied painting under George Mavroides.

He continued his education by visiting many European Museums, in particular Le Louvre, where he studied historical western art, mainly the Renaissance and Baroque period.

The Marathon Boy, 340-330 B.C.

The Marathon Boy or Ephebe of Marathon is a Greek bronze sculpture found in the Aegean Sea in the bay of Marathon in 1925.

It is conserved in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens where it is dated to around 340-330 BC.

The Museum suggests that the subject is the winner of an athletic competition.

Sleeping Hermaphroditus / L'Ermafrodito dormiente

The ambivalence and voluptuous curves of this figure of Hermaphroditus, who lies asleep on a mattress sculpted by Bernini, are still a source of fascination today.

His body merged with that of the nymph Salmacis, whose advances he had rejected, Hermaphroditus, son of Hermes and Aphrodite, is represented as a bisexed figure.

The original that inspired this figure would have dated from the 2nd century BC, reflecting the late Hellenistic taste for the theatrical.

Department of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities: Hellenistic Art (3rd-1st centuries BC) Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities - Musée du Louvre.

Theodoros Pantaleon (1945-2025) | Surrealist painter

Theodoros Pantaleon / Θεόδωρος Πανταλέων (1945-2025) was a Greek surrealist painter and engraver.

He studied graphic arts at the Athens Technological Institute Doxiadis School taught by A. Tassos, A. Asteriadis, I. Dekoulakos, G. Georgiadis and S. Lydakis.

In his works, he uses typical elements of surrealism, while he adds elements of mannerism with portraits where he uses dreamy and imaginary sets.

Ancient Greek | Legacy

The civilization of ancient Greece has been immensely influential on language, politics, educational systems, philosophy, science, and the arts. It became the Leitkultur of the Roman Empire to the point of marginalizing native Italic traditions. As Horace put it,

Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artis / intulit agresti Latio (Epistulae 2.1.156f.)

"Captive Greece took captive her uncivilised conqueror and instilled her arts in rustic Latium".

Platone | The Arts in education

The Republic (Greek: Πολιτεία, Politeia) is a Socratic dialogue, written by Plato around 380 BC, concerning the definition of justice (δικαιοσύνη), the order and character of the just city-state and the just man ecc..

It is Plato's best-known work, and one of the world's most influential works of philosophy and political theory, both intellectually and historically.

In the dialogue, Socrates discusses with various Athenians and foreigners the meaning of justice and whether the just man is happier than the unjust man.

Raffaello | Scuola di Atene - Platone / Raphael - The School of Athens (1509-1511)

Socrate: "Wonder is the beginning of wisdom"

Socrates (Σωκράτης; c. 470 BC - 399 BC) was a classical Greek (Athenian) philosopher credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy.

Through his portrayal in Plato's dialogues, Socrates has become renowned for his contribution to the field of ethics, and it is this Platonic Socrates who lends his name to the concepts of Socratic irony and the Socratic method, or elenchus.

The latter remains a commonly used tool in a wide range of discussions, and is a type of pedagogy in which a series of questions is asked not only to draw individual answers, but also to encourage fundamental insight into the issue at hand.

• "Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people".

• "Le menti forti discutono di idee, le menti medie discutono di eventi, le menti deboli discutono di persone".

• "I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think".

• "Non posso insegnare niente a nessuno. Posso solo fargli pensare".

Jacques-Louis David | The Death of Socrates, 1787 (detail) | Metropolitan Museum of Art

Sphinx of Naxos

The Sphinx of Naxos, also Sphinx of the Naxians, now in the Archaeological Museum of Delphi, is a 2.22 meter tall marble statue of a sphinx, a mythical creature with the head of a woman, the chest and wings composed of the impressive feathers of a prey bird turned upward, and the body of a lioness.

The Sphinx stood on a 10 meter column that culminated in one of the first Ionic capitals, and was erected next to the Temple of Apollo in Delphi, the religious center of Ancient Greece, in 560 BCE.

The first fragments were excavated from the sanctuary of the Temple of Apollo in 1860. The remainder was found in 1893.

Konstantinos Kavafis | La Città / Η Πόλις / The City

Hai detto: "Andrò per altra terra ed altro mare.

Una città migliore di questa ci sarà.

Tutti gli sforzi sono condanna scritta. E qua

giace sepolto, come un morto, il cuore.

E fino a quando, in questo desolato languore?

Pavlos Samios / Παύλος Σάμιος (1948-2021)

Aristotele: "Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies"

Aristotele / Ἀριστοτέλης, (Stagira, 384 a.C. o 383 a.C. - Calcide, 322 a.C.) è stato un filosofo Greco antico, ritenuto una delle menti più universali, innovative, prolifiche ed influenti di tutti i tempi, sia per la vastità che per la profondità dei suoi campi di conoscenza.

Insieme a Platone, suo maestro, e a Socrate è considerato uno dei padri del pensiero filosofico occidentale, che però soprattutto da Aristotele ha ereditato problemi, termini, concetti e metodi.

• "La cultura è un ornamento nella buona sorte ma un rifugio nell'avversa".

• "Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity".

Konstantinos Kavafis | Per le scale / On the stairs / Στες σκάλες

Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis, noto in Italia anche come Costantino Kavafis / Κωνσταντίνος Καβάφης (Alessandria d'Egitto, 1863-1933), è stato un poeta e giornalista Greco.

Kavafis era uno scettico che fu accusato di attaccare i tradizionali valori della cristianità, del patriottismo e dell'eterosessualità, anche se non sempre si trovò a suo agio nel ruolo di anticonformista.

Pubblicò 154 poesie, spesso ispirate all'antichità ellenistica, romana e bizantina, ma molte altre sono rimaste incomplete od allo stato di bozza.

Scrisse le sue poesie più importanti dopo i quarant'anni.

Come un recluso, egli non fu mai riconosciuto durante la sua vita.

Oltre che i suoi soggetti, anticonvenzionali per l'epoca, le sue poesie mostrano anche un'abile e versatile arte, che viene spesso perduta nella traduzione delle sue opere.

La sua poetica viene insegnata nelle scuole greche.

Andre Kohn

Konstantinos Kavafis | Muri / Walls / Τείχη

Senza preavviso, né pietà, senza nessun pudore,

muri massicci ed alti mi hanno costruito intorno.

E sono qui che mi dispero e per il mio dolore

non penso ad altro: e mi rodo il cervello tutto il giorno.

René Magritte

Ghiannis Ritsos | Moonlight sonata / Sonata al chiaro di luna, 1956

Jeremy Mann

A spring evening.

A large room in an old house. A woman of a certain age, dressed in black, is speaking to a young man. They have not turned on the lights.

Through both windows the moonlight shines relentlessly.

I forgot to mention that the Woman in Black has published two or three interesting volume of poetry with a religious flavor.

So, the Woman in Black is speaking to the Young Man:

Eraclito: "Il carattere di un uomo è il suo destino"

• "L'armonia invisibile è una sfera perfetta e incontaminata. Quella visibile, invece, si deforma continuamente sotto il peso della realtà…"

• "L'apprendere molte cose non insegna l'intelligenza.."

Raphael | The School of Athens, 1509-1511 | Heraclitus, detail | Stanze di Raffaello, Vatican

Giorgos Seferis | A word for Summer / Una parola sull'Estate, 1936

We’ve returned to autumn again; summer,

like an exercise book we’re tired of writing in, remains

full of deletions, abstract designs,

question marks in the margin; we’ve returned

to the season of eyes gazing

into the mirror under the electric light

closed lips and people strangers

in rooms in streets under the pepper-trees

while the headlights of cars massacre

thousands of pale masks.

Isaac Levitan (Russian landscape painter, 1860-1900) | Spring in Italy

Konstantinos Kavafis | Candele / Candles / Κεριά

Stanno i giorni futuri innanzi a noi

come una fila di candele accese

dorate, calde e vivide.

Restano indietro i giorni del passato,

penosa riga di candele spente:

le più vicine danno fumo ancora,

fredde, disfatte, e storte.

Matthias Stom | An Old Woman and a Boy by Candlelight | Birmingham Museum

John Keats | Ode on a Grecian Urn / Ode su un'Urna Greca, 1819

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,

Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape

Of deities or mortals, or of both,

In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

Alfred Elmore | A Greek Ode | Christie's