Gerasimos Steris

Between objectivity and its mythological excess, the dialogue for search of the aesthetically classic values, Gerassimos Stem expresses the magical realism of a mythological world, connecting, in some instances, the Greek artistic creation with the European modernism. More so, he is seeking the roots of the big European tradition in the arts, refusing to compromise to the industrial era, which overrules everything.

This search takes shape in a female form; a woman who could, in a purely metaphysical way, be found exactly in this particular space of the exhibition. Her, as another Ariadne who follows him and he follows her from the palaces of the Cretan king Minos to the shores Theseus' love brings her. It is the same string which the myth unravels for her or she does herself, due to her love, that guides the painter where he is in Greece, redolent of balance and analogies.

Gerassimos Steris' thirty seven drawings of the 1920-1935 period, from the collections of Alpha Bank, unfold the very same string to the viewer, in order to see, through the poetic bulk of the palette, a Greek earth that does not exist anymore, nor it even, perhaps, existed, but only in Homer's dream that the painter-poet conveys.

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Maria Marangou
Director, Rethymnon Centre for Contemporary Art

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A moonstruck missionary of art, Steris acted within his controlled 'insanity' as he was meant to, releasing from there the truths of his art. His drawing breathes in the rhythm of Picasso's and de Chirico 's perceptiveness. All three of them taught us that the art of painting is above all the art of drawing.

The secret source of inspiration in Steris's drawing is the art of Cycladic sculpture from five thousand years back and the culture of Central Europe which was called modern art.

In his own words, "my aim is to capture the ancient Greek vision - the Pythagorean one. Not that of pseudo-classicism but the older one; to render the Greek sense of humanity in color and form. I want to make clear colors and forms, because clarity is Greek. The form must be clear cut. I would be happy to capture the emotion that pervades the Greek atmosphere and cannot he found anywhere else in the world.

Art is for me the de-spiritualization of all material elements. We have misunderstood the material aspect of the image. The same truths have been touching the more profound human instinct, whether as primitive instinct or as mathematically musical civilization".

Kostas Stavropoulos
Art critic