Ut pictura poesis (as is painting so is poetry) is the Latin rendering by the Roman poet Horace (1st c. BC) of the famous statement by the Greek lyric poet Simonides of Ceos (5th c. BC) “poetry is a speaking picture, painting a silent poetry”. Horace’s equivalence regarding the hierarchy of the two arts has sparked enduring debates from antiquity through the Renaissance, when artists ceased to be regarded merely as craftsmen and were considered equals with poets, who exercised a spiritual vocation. Leonardo da Vinci’s declaration that painting is a spiritual matter (cosa mentale) has since become a principle, just as the autonomy of an artwork — which draws from poetic creation — is now universally acknowledged.
Poetic are the creations which inspired the works of Andreas Georgiadis presented in this exhibition: those of Constantine Cavafy, Kiki Dimoula, and the Romantic philhellene Lord Byron. In his encounter with poetry, Georgiadis mobilizes the formative qualities of his art to illustrate the verses and to convey the atmosphere that carries the significance of the words. After all, the cognitive mechanisms of the poet and the painter are closely related. Composition, rhythm, and the nuances contained within a poem are fundamental components of a painting, aren’t they? Yet, Georgiadis’s works do not correspond to a “word-for-word illustration”, because the painter does not seek to depict the verses literally but to reform them creatively. His visual translation is in dialogue with the deeper meaning of the words, which he forms with inventiveness and genuine emotion. His images are sincere, respectful of the poetic work. They do not interfere nor impose interpretations. They do not deceive the viewer. And importantly, they do not diminish the work by reducing it to the limits of personal interpretation — as, unfortunately, many contemporary artists do, “without shame”, when they “redefine” classical works.
With his images, Georgiadis does not merely describe the lines, but reveals the dominant idea of the poem through his art and, of course, through his own feelings. For he is not a passive recipient but a creator who, freely, uses his art as a vehicle of visual metaphor for the poetic work. This process of “free transfer” of poetry into painting has been excellently described by Giorgos Seferis. Praising the Pictorial commentaries created by Yannis Moralis to illustrate the publication of his collected Poems (Ikaros, 1965), Seferis notes: “Rarely have I had success with fusing different genres. For me, it has always been like two horses yoked on the same cart, which suddenly begin to pull in opposite directions. […] However, when […] Moralis showed me his paintings, I realised that there are times when there may be no cart at all, but only two horses galloping free across a green field”.
The formative capacity of painting is, after all, not unknown to Georgiadis, who has already brought to life “a few beloved cities”, such as Alexandria, Venice, and Constantinople. His familiarity with this challenge is reflected in works inspired by the otherworldly sacredness of Apollo’s birthplace. The captivating atmosphere of the sacred island is recreated through suggestive compositions illuminated by golden touches of Apollo’s radiance, which Byron extolled:
Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung!
Eternal summer gilds them yet.
“The Isles of Greece”
A small group of works constitutes confessional creations from the painter’s Personal mythology. Undoubtedly, the reason behind the inception of an artistic creation is rarely fully comprehensible. The artist activates impressions and stimuli, external or internal, and shapes them. Here, Georgiadis allows his imagination to run free, expressing through his art his inner voice, shaped by conscious or subconscious choices and circumstances. His goal is to provoke aesthetic emotion that will resonate with the viewer’s sensitivity. A common feature of these works is their dreamlike atmosphere, which seems to evoke a memory or a desire. The transparent, meditative surfaces hint at a volatile reality perceived through emotion rather than vision. A sensitive viewer might call them “poetic images”.
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