Exodus
The work “Exodus” is now housed at the Presidency of the Hellenic Republic. Sotiris Felios and the foundation “The Other Arcadia” donated it heartily to the President, Ms. Katerina Sakellaropoulou, accepted it in an equally heartfelt ceremony. I thank them deeply for the honor they bestowed upon me, for the joy they gave me, and for the pride.
I remember as a child, the fragrance of spring on Holy Week, and the sharp tang of the salt from the lagoon of Missolonghi moistening the sweltering summer heat of the Agrinio plain where I grew up. The sanctity of the resistance and sacrifice of the Free Besieged hallowed our land, and the fact that we honored its past, with both its glories and its sorrows, gave meaning to transcending the self-evident concerns of daily life in favor of an ideal community that surpassed us. Gestures like these serve as a reminder, even symbolically, of the unpayable debt owed to the struggles for the “common and essential,” the living eternity of sacrifice.
Alongside the donation, “The Other Arcadia” foundation published a commemorative volume, which, apart from the collector’s address, includes The Little Threshing Floor by Maria Delivoria about Dionysios Solomos, an excerpt from Georgios Tertsetis’ defense speech on the sacrifice of the Greeks, as well as works and texts by the painter relating to the Exodus of Missolonghi.
