NIKOS XATZIKYRIAKOS-GHYKAS
 Nikos Xatzikyriakos-Ghykas was a multi-talented individual – he
was a painter, sculptor, engraver, iconographer and an academic. He has strong links with the island of Hydra.As a student, he studied ancient art, both Byzantine art and folk art. He also learnt the latest European artistic trends and was a Greek cubist artist. His focus was on the purity and harmony of Greek art. He wanted to break it down to its simplest form. This meant a reinterpretation of Greek art as geometric shapes and interlocking planes.
You can find his artistic works in the National Gallery of Athens, the Musee d’Art Moderne of Paris, the Tate Gallery of London, the Metropolitan Museum of New York and in private collections all around the world. Xatzikyriakos-Ghykaswas born in 1906 in Athens. As a teenager, his family recognised his talent and had him study with the famous artist named Parthenis. In 1923, he moved to Paris and studied French Literature and Esthetics at the Sorbonne University. After Sorbonne, he continued to study painting and engraving at the Academie Ranson. His first exhibition was in 1927 at the Gallerie Percier. Even Picasso had met and commented on the works of this young Greek painter. The ancestral house of the family of Gikas was located on the island of Hydra.
In 1937, Nikos Xatzikyriakos-Ghykasrebuilt and redesigned it. This ancestral home was restored with grandeur. He did some paintings in his inimitable style, especially for this home. His style combined the elements of cubism with Greek nature, light and architecture. He was greatly inspired by the landscape, light and architecture of Hydra. Unfortunately, his ancestral home was later destroyed in a fire. The loss was deeply felt by the inhabitants of Hydra.In 1933, he organized in Athens the 4th International Architectural Symposium.
Another exhibition of his paintings and sculptures was organized by himself in 1934. This exhibition was at the Gallerie des Cahiers d’Art. He was an editor of an art magazine called 3rd Eye for three years from 1935 to 1937. He was thought enough as an architectural expert to be offered a position at the Architectural School of National Technical University of Athens in 1941. At the Bienale in Venice, he exhibited 17 of his paintings.
From 1950 to 1968, he had 12 exhibitions in Athens, Paris, London (at the Whitechapel Gallery), Berlin and New York. Later, he became a member of a number of academies. He joined the Athens Academy in 1973. He joined the Royal Academy in London. He also joined the Tiberiana Academy in Rome. The French government honored him by giving him the title of Officier des Artes et des Lettres.
The last exhibition that he ever did was in 1988 at the Royal Academy of London. He died six years later on September 3rd, 1994 in Athens.
GEORGE SEFERIS
 Seferis was born in Izmir, Turkey. Stelios Seferiadis was his
father who had started out as lawyer. He later became a Professor at the University of Athens. Like his son, he was a poet and a translator. He staunchly defended Venizelism and did not the like the official Greek language. He liked the demotic Greek language. His father’s views did have some effect on his views. Seferis’ family moved to Athens in 1914.
He finished high school there. He studied law at the Sorbonne in Paris from 1918 to 1925. Izmir, Turkey was originally known as Smyrna and the Turks took it over again in 1922 and his family had to flee. He could not visit his hometown again until 1950. For Seferis, this felt like an exile and it influenced his poetry.
He also showed great interest in the story of Odysseus. His poetry was also influenced by Kayafis, T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. He returned to Greece in 1925 and the Royal Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs admitted him. He was considered to be a successful diplomat. He was based in England from 1931 to 1934. He then was transferred to Albania where he lived from 1936 to 1938. Three years later in 1941, he married, just before the Germans invaded Greece.
After the Germans invasion, he fled with the Free Greek Government to Crete, Egypt, South Africa and Italy. He returned to a free Athens in 1944. He continued to be a diplomat and held posts in Turkey and England. He was a Minister to Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Iraq from 1953 to 1956. He was finally an ambassador to England from 1957 to 1961. He retired as an ambassador.
George Seferis was not just a poet, he was also and avid lover of photography. An exhibition of black and white photos was organized that showcased his best pictures as a photographer. He took two pictures in Hydra in November of 1939. They are regarded as two of his best photographs. One picture was of Henry Miller where he is shown laughing on a port of the island of Hydra. The second one is of a Hydrian house.He got many honors and prizes in his lifetime. Some honors that he got were honorary doctoral degrees from the Universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Slavonic and Princeton.
One of the loves of Seferis was Cyprus. He first went to Cyprus in 1952 and fell in love with the place at first sight. The island reminded him deeply of the summers that he spent as a kid in Scale. He had a whole book of poems called Imerologio Katastromatos III devoted to Cyprus. The book was also mostly written there. Originally, he wanted to call the book “Cyprus, where it was ordained for me…”. This was a quotation from a poem by Euripides called Helen.
In the poem, Helen’s brother named Teucer told Helen that Apollo has decreed that Cyprus is his home. Seferis sees this decree as a good thing. When the book was published in 1959, he changed the title from Imerologio Katastromatos III to his original title. During his diplomatic career, Seferis did devote some of his time to resolve the Cypriot dispute between England, Greece and Turkey. These countries were in dispute over its international status. Should it be independent or a part of one of these countries? He became personally involved in this dispute and allowed his personal and public lives to mix.
In 1963, Seferis became the first Greek to ever win a Nobel Prize for Literature. He got the award for starting a renaissance of Greek literature and culture in the 20th century.In 1967, there was a coup in Greece. The group that did the coup was the Regime of the Colonels and they were right-wing nationalists. For two years, they censored the press and detained and tortured political opponents.
Seferis was against this regime. He openly expressed his views to the BBC World Service and all the other newspapers. Unfortunately, he did not make it to the end of this regime. This regime lasted till 1974. He did not live that long. His funeral turned into a political protest. As his coffin went down the streets of Athens, people sang his banned poem called “Denial”. He was a hero for being against this regime.
ODYSSEAS ELITIS
 A famous member of the center of artistic creation was
Odysseas Elitis or Elytis. He was a Greek poet and was considered to be one of the most significant representatives of Greek modernism. His family name was actually Alepoudelis. Elytis or Elitis was his pen name. In 1979, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
He was born on the island of Crete on November 2nd, 1911. His family then moved to Athens. He finished high school there and later went to the Law School at Athens University.
He published his first poem in 1935 in the journal called New Letters. His published poem started a new era in Greek poetry. In 1937, he finished his military requirements. He was selected as an army cadet and became part of the National Military School in Corfu.
During World War II, he was promoted to Second Lieutenant and was transferred to 1St Army Corps Headquarters. He then was moved to the 24th Regiment where he was at the front lines at one of the WW II battlefields. Even in battle, he continued to write and publish poetry anthologies and essays on contemporary poetry and art.After World War II, he first became a program director of the Greek National Radio Foundation. He would become a director again in 1953. He also has been a member of the Greek National Theatre’s Administrative Council. He eventually became a President of the Administrative Council of Greek Radio and Television.
In 1960, he won the First State Poetry Prize. He was also awarded the Order of the Phoenix in 1965 and got an honorary degree from the Thessaloniki University in 1975.He did not spend all of his life in Greece. He did travel to Paris. He studied phitology and literature at the Sorbonne. The island of Hydra in Greece, however, was one of his favorite vacation spots and he regularly went there. The pioneers of the world’s avant-garde like Everdy, Breton and Picasso welcomed him into their group. He got published in France with the help of a man named Teriade. They became quick friends because they were both from the same Greek island. Also, they both loved the Greek painter Theophilos.
After Paris, Elitis visited Switzerland, England, Italy and Spain.In 1961, he was invited by the United States State Department to come to the United States. The Soviet Union invited him in 1963 and Bulgaria invited him to come to their country in 1965. He died in March of 1996. The focus of Elitis’ poetry was on Hellenism of the day. It was based on how he felt about Greek mythology and institutions.
One of his most famous poems called Funerary Epigrams mentions the island of Hydra. In these Aegean islands of Greece, he found an atmosphere for him to imbibe in such diverse and sunlit settings. He wrote: “When my interest in poetry was first awakened, round the age of seventeen, I found myself in possession of a fund of experience acquired from my life in the islands; my imagination had developed among the rocks and the caiques - the small island boats - among the rectangular, whitewashed houses, and the windmills.
The Aegean had indelibly stamped my consciousness. Thus provided, I could easily have started on a poetic career the sole aspiration of which would have been to reveal the Greece of sun and sea, and would have contented myself with that. But it so happened that, at this crucial moment, I became aware of the theories and the works of the revolutionary French movement of Surrealism. I read with passion all the books and magazines which came from Paris.”He was trying to fulfill many goals in his poetry. One goal was to rid the Greeks of any unjustified remorse they had. He wanted to complement natural elements through ethical powers. He wanted to reach the highest possible transparency in expression. He wanted solve the mystery of light and the metaphysics of the sun.
The key features of this Modern Greek poet, even in his maturity, stemmed from his “Aegean consciousness” and his association with what he described as the “flexible Greek tradition” in literature.His poetry was set to music by Mikis Theodorakis. This music became very popular with the Greeks and became a new gospel of the Greek people. His theories and philosophies have been examined in his own essays and in essays by other people.
HENRY MILLER
 Henry Miller is an illustrious member of the center of artistic
freedom of Hydra. This is the same Henry Miller that has been depicted in many movies. He was played by Fred Ward in the 1990 movie called Henry & June. Rip Torn played him in 1970 film called Tropic of Cancer. Wayne Rodda played him in a 1970 low budge film called Quiet Days in Clichy. He was also depicted in another movie by Andrew McCarthy in 1990.
Who was Henry Miller? Henry Miller was an American writer and painter. He was known for experimenting with the novel form. He was trying to create a new kind of novel that would be a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association and mysticism. The novels that show his experimentalism best are the Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn and Black Spring. In addition to his novels, he wrote travel memoirs and essays of literary criticism and analysis.
Henry Miller’s parents were a tailor named Heinrich Miller and Louise Marie Neitling. They lived in New York City when he was born and they were both of German Catholic heritage. When he was a young man, he tried his hand at many jobs while briefly attending the City College of New York.
In 1928 and 1929, he spent several months with his second wife named June Edith Smith. In 1930, he moved to Paris alone and stayed until the start of World War II. His lifestyle in Paris was dependent on the kindness of friends such as Anais Nin. She was his lover and financed the first edition of the Tropic of Cancer in 1934. In the autumn of 1931, Miller worked for the Chicago Tribune (Paris edition) as a proofreader. His friend named Alfred Perles helped him get this job. He also submitted articles to the newspaper, but he only did it in Perles’s name. Staff members were not allowed to be writers as well so he couldn’t submit articles under his own name.
After the outbreak of World War II, he returned to his home country and settled in Big Sur, California. He continued to his books that so upset his fellow Americans. His last years were spent in Pacific Palisades. After his died in Pacific Palisades, he was cremated and his ashes were spread over Big Sure which had been his home for a long time. You can see his water color paintings at the The Henry Miller Museum of Art in Omachi Cirt in Nagano, Japan and the Henry Miller Art Museum at Coast Gallery in Big Sur.
Henry Miller was introduced to Nikos Xatzikyriakos-Ghykasby George Katsimbalis and George Seferis. Within one week of their association, this rare quartet of creative talent traveled to Hydra for a stay at the Gikas family home. In The Colossus of Maroussi, Miller’s has given a detailed account of his Greek travels, among which the trip to Hydra was amongst the first. This was a huge turning point for him. Those few days in Hydra had a profound effect on his perception of all the places he visited later. He visited Hydra island just before the outbreak of World War II. The anarchy of the homes impelled Henry Miller to remark on the “wild and naked perfection of Hydra.”
In The Colossus of Maroussi, after the initial bout of descriptive and striking prose highlighting the aesthetic qualities of Hydra, his writing turns into a trance-like mode. He remarks that Hydra is a very special rock, “entered as a pause in the musical score of creation by an expert calligrapher. It is one of those divine pauses which permit the musician, when he resumes the melody, to go forth in a totally new direction. At this point one may as well throw the compass away. To move towards creation does one need a compass? Having touched this rock I lost all sense of earthly direction.”A Hydra-stunned Miller remarks: "The town, which clusters about the harbor in the form of an amphitheatre, is immaculate"Developers have tried to develop the island, partly based on the famous people who visited the island. Henry Miller helped tourism in Hydra.
The tourists brought prosperity and mansions and homes were restored. It became a popular place for artists and writers who think they will be inspired by the beauty of the island.
DIMITRIS PIKIONIS
 Another famous person connected with the center of artistic
creation in Hydra is Dimitris Pikionis. He was a Greek architect and teacher.
He originally came from the island of Chios. The architecture of Chios influenced his architectural work. At the National Technical University of Athens, he studied civil engineering from 1904 to 1908. While studying there, he became acquainted with Giorgio de Chirico, who also influenced on his work. After college, he went to Munich and Paris to study painting and sculpture.
He ended up choosing architecture due to financial reasons. He studied architecture at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts from 1909 to 1912, but he did not get a degree. He then returned to Greece to study fold art and served in the Balkan Wars and World War I. After World War I, he studied drawing and ornamentation at the Higher School of Fine Arts. He received a diploma from this school in 1923. While studying at this school, he was an Assistant to the Chair of Classical and Medieval Architecture in the National Technical University.
After graduating in 1923, he became an architect for good and started a private practice. His practice was only stopped by his death in 1968. He was a Professor at the National Technical University. Being a professor helped him influence Greek architecture greatly. He met Nikos Xatzikyriakos-Ghykaswhen he was 41 in 1928. Gikas felt that Pikionis had spent a long time on thinking about life. He had sound knowledge on a variety of subjects. He would rile his listeners by exploring a subject matter that they were not familiar with. He felt that Pikionis had opened new horizons for him.
Pikionis ended up influencing him greatly. Gikas said that when he met Pikionis, he seemed like an anchorite, a new St. Climacius. He was like a humble ascetic or a sage of ancient Greece.
Hydra is visited by numerous colleges and universities to visit the five locations where the famous people went. They read works about them. The most popular works include those by Henry Miller, Patricia Storace, Louis de Bernieres, George Seferis, Nikos Kazantzakis and Alki Zei.
You may also read about other authors and poets who have things to say about Greece and Hydra. Hydra is said to be center of artistic creation in Greece. Its natural beauty has left an indelible impression on many.
The photos are from: www.benaki.gr, www.bbc.co.uk, 11dim-kaval.kav.sch.gr, www.temple.edu, www.greekarchitects.gr |
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