‘It was a burning afternoon, heavy and depressing, when we left Mytilene Going to visit one of the mountainous villages of the island, Agiassos »is written in his impressions of a trip to Lesvos in the summer of 1930, published in the Athens newspaper” Free Step “by the poet and painter Costas Uranis. A few days after this unique sample of “Travel Literature” was published in the newspaper “Pachidromos” in Mytilene, published by the “sacred monsters” of journalism and literature at the same time Thielpis Lefkia and Stratis Mirivilis.
Ninety -five years later, this sheet of the newspaper “Postman” in Lesvos is recovered from the Public Central Repository Mytilene Library And it gives the modern reader images, moments and contradictions of the island, stylized by the stylus of Costas Urani.
Who, as the Library’s director Maria Gregora says to RES, says, “he illuminates without perhaps realizing it himself, forms and situations that would later gain historical weight. Among them is a brief, almost graphic reference to the great folk painter Theophilos Hatzimichael and his lost frescoes in the café in Karini, which is, however, one of the few modern testimonies of Theophilos, before recognizing him as a great folk painter. “
Mrs Gregora transcribes and comments on the text of Costas Uranus
As the car crossed the vast olive grove of Gera’s Gulf, everything seemed to simmer under the light. Tree leaf does not sprinkle, and from the openings left by the olives, rhododendries and chaos, the vaginal waters looked to spread immovable and glossy, as a mirror reflecting the vertical sunlight. At any other time, heaven notes, this bay would hold your eyes magnetized, so nice. Its close graphic entrance is reminiscent of the Norway fjords. But in the liviri, beauty does not find space: the eye becomes a bastard, and the only longing is for a little dew …
The road continues and leads to Keramia, a small settlement that was formerly inhabited by Turks and has now become a refugee village. There, in the shadow of the big trees, watering waters with murmur soft, and life rolls with a calm everyday life. Heaven notes a short scene: young refugees spread tobacco leaves in the yards to dry, while the car passes without stopping. But the driver promises a better station, and Karini proves to be paradise of greenery, shadows and waters.
“Indeed, after a new route to the blinding liviri, we stopped in a small paradise of greenery, shadows and running water: Karini … There was no oasis but a café, whose whole clientele was two villagers.”
In this café, under the ancient plane trees and next to a frozen water café, heaven discovers not only the cool, but also something completely unexpected: the frescoes of an unknown then folk painter who had made this humble coffee.
“But what he did great was the frescoes that were painted on his exterior walls. These frescoes did not, of course, have the value of frescoes of the good Byzantine era or regeneration. They were simplistic and incomprehensible, constructions of a Mesopotamian, as I was told, a bastard who was going to paint the place by painting what was happening and wherever he happened, once for a little food and more often for his own pleasure. “
Theophilos of Theophilos is characterized by unknowingly and simplistic, reminiscent of more folk chromolithographs that one sees in all the micromagas of the Greek provinces: robbers as lobster, villagers dancing, a romantic boar of Aphrodite that heaven notes that no one would want as “his wife in reality”.
And yet, in this apparent sloppiness, heaven distinguishes something true. The colors reports have a “music liquidity”, their contrasts sweet, the walls look like “like a crushed Persian carpets”.
It is, without yet knowing, about the first impressions of the work of Theophilos Hatzimichael, the great folk painter of Lesvos, whose value will be officially recognized a few years later thanks to the contribution of Lesvi Technic Criticism.
“The description of the heaven,” says Gregoras, is of great value today, because it shows us how the works of an authentic folk artist were before they were officially recognized and even take their place in museums such as the Louvre. At the same time, it shows us the spontaneous and natural way in which people were seen and felt. It was not yet the Theophilus of Encyclopedia and Museums, he was a wandering, almost marginal press, painting cafes and courtyards with the flame of his personal need for creation. And yet, through the eyes of the heaven, there is a rare beauty, a kind of “informal” grandeur that no academy can award. “
And after his reference to the then unknown and despised, “bastard” Theophilos, heaven continues his journey to Agiassos … The road goes up again. The landscape becomes tougher: bare hills, stony slopes, silver olives that shine under the sun, and cicadas that set up endless sound carpet. The tiring route, the air hot, almost oven, and the search for Agiassos remains vain until … at last.
Agiassos is suddenly revealed, in a lush landscape. Tall, narrow -leaf popcorn, like cypresses, pop up and rise to the bright sky. To the right and left are dense gardens, a indication of a residential area. The look eventually meets the first houses of the village.
“The heavenly text is not just travel literature, it is a historical document. It describes the plain of Gera and the village of the pottery, records the sense of Greek summer, with the hot apnea, the fine dust hovering in the air and the endless tingle of the tzitzikia, although it was written 95 years ago, many of these elements remain alive. But most of all, it gives us an early portrait of Theophilus through the eyes of another spiritual man of his time, ”concludes Ms. Gregoras.