| : Είναι τώρα η ευκαιρία μου να παρακολουθώ τον αγαπημένο μου συμβουλή, τον Ακαδηματικό Διευθυντή του Μουσείου Μπανάκη, τον Γιώργο Μαγγίνις, που θα παρακολουθήσει σήμερα το όμορφο λεκτήριο. Εμπνεύ Tack you very much, dear Sharon, for the kind introduction. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening to all the friends who have logged on today's lecture from around the world. Earlier on, Sharon asked us to write on chat where we are around the world and we've got a very good turnover, 130 participants at this moment. It is a pleasure and an honor to co-host the second UCLA Stavros Niarchos Foundation Center and Benaki Museum Lecture together with Professor Gestell. And it is a joy to welcome Evita Arapoglou, tonight's speaker. The aim of these lectures is to showcase the collections of the Benaki Museum, best known for her research on Nikos Chatzikyriakos Gikas or Niko Gika, a modern master, with whom and on whose art she has worked for years. I will only mention two of her studies on Gika, her book from 1992 on his drawings and her knowledge is reflected in her articles and also in her volumes on the Greek collection of the A.G. Leventis Foundation, which she has been curating for 25 years and which is now housed in the splendid A.G. Leventis Gallery in Nicosia, Cyprus. Evita is a woman of many talents and several hats and she serves as Vice Chairman of the Center of Asia Minor Studies in Athens and she was recently elected as a member of the Board of Trustees of our very own Benaki Museum. Tonight, she has chosen to talk to us on a subject which is very close to her heart and is also of particular interest to the audience of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Center. She will discuss the intertwined lives and the beautiful homes of Niko Gika, John Craxton and Patrick Lee Fermor, three major figures in post-war Greece. Intriguingly, two of these houses are now under the custodianship of the Benaki Museum, namely the Gika Gallery in Athens and the Patrick and John Lee Fermor House in Carba, mainly. It tells you a lot about Greek culture. The interaction between Gika, Craxton and Lee Fermor was explored in the Charmed Lives exhibition and its accompanying best-selling publication in 2017-2018. Organized by the AG Leventis Gallery, both exhibition and book were launched in Nicosia, then they traveled to the Benaki Museum in Athens and they concluded their journey at the British Museum in London. Now, without further delay, I would like to invite Vita Arapoglou to talk to us on Niko Gika, John Craxton, Patrick Lee Fermor, Charmed Lives in Greece. Thank you very much, Sharon and George, for your kind introduction. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening to all, wherever you are. Thank you for joining us. I am honored to have been invited by the Staples and Athens Foundation Center and the Benaki Museum to participate in their Hellenic Together series of lectures. I am also very happy to see that quite a few among tonight's participants have had the chance to visit our exhibition, Charmed Lives in Greece, two years ago, an exhibition organized by the Leventis Gallery in Nicosia, where it first opened, then at the Benaki Museum in Athens and finally at the British Museum in London. Please give me a few moments to share with you the images of my talk. A few years ago, after a series of interesting coincidences, Sir Michael William Smith, Ian Collins, Ioanna Moraetian and I realized that it would be exciting to research and tell, through an exhibition and a publication, the fascinating story of the friendship between Niko Gika, John Craxton and Patrick Lee Fermor. The story of their friendship and of their shared love of the Greek world. Three distinctive personalities, all of them creative, life-loving and charismatic. Two artists and a writer, two British men who loved Greece so much as to make it their second homeland and a Greek whose life events brought him very close to Britain. Their friendship started right after the Second World War. But before talking about these first years, let's say a few words about each one of them before they met each other. Niko Gika, the eldest of the three, was born in Athens in 1906. The son of the Admiral Alexandros Chatzikyriakos and of Eleni Gika. After his first art lessons with Konstantinos Parthenis, he left for Paris to study at the Académie Nansons. He had his first exhibition at the age of 21, showing his work in Paris, where he became close to intellectuals, artists, architects, writers. To mention a few names, the poet George Seferis, the psychiatrist Angelos Katapouzinos, you see him here in the photograph on your left. The art critic Christian Zervos, the collector Eriad, the architect Le Corbusier, pictured here with Gika during a visit in Greece. In 1935, Gika returned to Athens, where he would remain during the years of the war. Patrick B. Fermor, or Paddy, as almost everyone called him, was born in London in 1915 and had rather adventurous school years. At the time when Gika was exploring the artistic scene of Paris, he had set at the age of 18 to cross Europe on foot from the Hook of Holland until Constantinople, where he arrived on New Year's Day of 1935. He would later continue his journey through Greece. He would take part in the war, fighting in Crete. He would spend two years on the mountains, supporting the Cretan resistance, disguised as a shepherd and nicknamed Michaelis, or Philedem. And in 1944, he would organize the famous abduction of German commander, General Kreuter, in the occupied Crete. John Craxton, the youngest of three friends, was born in London in 1922 in a family of musicians, and like Paddy, he also had rather eventful school years. Staying in England during the war, he and his close friend, the later famous artist Lucian Freud, were supported by Peter Watson, the co-founder of the magazine Horizon. During this melancholic period for him in England, John had met and was close friends with John Rayner, later John Lee Firmont. Gika, Craxton, and Lee Firmont met sometime between the winter of 1945 and the spring of 1946. Gika was visiting London for the first time, and during this visit, he met people in the art world. He took part in two exhibitions, one at the Royal Academy and one at the Greek House. He also met John Craxton, who had already seen and admired his works of Idra, reproductions of which were published in the Horizon magazine. The story goes that Gika, together with art lover Lady Morton, encouraged John to come to Greece. During that time, Greece was aiming to disseminate Greek culture, literature, and art abroad. Encounters with Greek and British writers and artists in Athens were frequent since the mid-war years. There was a particular interest for traveling around the country, and especially for meeting those artists and writers who were inspired and involved in the pursuit of Greekness, the redefinition of Greek identity, through tradition, history, and art. To name some of these figures of this Anglo-Hellenic collaboration, Lawrence Darrell, Stephen Runciman, Rex Warner, George Katsimbalis, George Seferis, and Patrick Lee Firmont, here you can see all three of them, Niko Hadjikiriakos Gika, and John Craxton. These gatherings of Greek and foreign intellectuals, poets, and artists, were characteristic of this Golden Age, and would also often happen in tavernas in Plaka, usually Platanos or Eftahvekia, the Seven Brothers, where they would stay until very late, talking, drinking lecina, and singing. Center of attraction of that time was the British Council, which had become a forum of collaboration, further enhanced by Lee Firmont's lectures, as well as by the periodical Anglo-Hellenic Review, and by various exhibitions of art. John Craxton had actually exhibited there his first Greek works, inspired by the island of Poros, his first contact with the Mediterranean light, which was to so influence his work. The young artist had found in Greece what he was always seeking, and as indeed he admitted later, he had felt as if he was returning home. It wasn't just the color and the brightness of the Greek landscape which fascinated him. It was the temperament of people, which evidently matched his own philosophy of life. Greece was much more than everything I had imagined, he wrote, at the time he was painting his first vividly colored landscapes. Craxton loved the various figures he saw around him. Shepherds, fishermen, village people, all dominated his works of the period, many of them exhibited in the British Council in Athens and in London. Maggie continued his wanderings in the Greek countryside, and in 1951 he embarked on exploring the Peloponnese together with Joan, whose photographs captured images of the place and its people. All of Greece is absorbing and rewarding, he wrote. There is hardly a rock or a stream without a battle or a myth, a miracle or a peasant anecdote or a superstition, and talk and incident, nearly all of it, odd or memorable, thickened around the traveler's path at every step. Paddy and Joan, and John, traveled around the Greek islands, and together with Frederick Ashton and Margaret Fontaine, they would also visit Epidaurus. Paddy's extensive knowledge on Greece impressed his fellow travelers and made him assume the role of guide. But the place which truly connected Luther, John Craxton, and Nikos Gika, as well as the two wives, Joan and Barbara, was the island of Hydra. Gika's ancestral home was an 18th century family mansion built on Kamini, a little further west from the main harbor. Gika, who had returned to Greece after his time in Paris, rediscovered the place of his childhood memories. Moved by the breathtaking beauty of the island, he decided to restore the neglected house. Paddy shared his admiration of the spectacular views of Hydra and wrote, For the houses, as though in protest against the masterly swirl of rock, are cubic, solid, and severe. The great ones are built of blocks of grey stone, hewn from the mountain. The others are of blinding white, and they might have been since sliced and squared out of goat's cheese. This period of Hydra's revival was when Gika painted a series of works inspired by its landscapes and which are considered landmarks in his oeuvre. The island's morphology was perfectly corresponding to his cubist pictorial expression of the time. My works from that period are like silent symphonies of geometric shapes and bright colors. They are rather abstract compositions, combining rocks, houses, stonework, stairs, walls, the sky and the sea. The moving objects in them are birds, clouds, and kites. The house, with its terraces and the uninterrupted views over the sea towards the Peloponnese, was charming every visitor. The Gikas offered hospitality to friends from Greece and abroad, among them Henri Cartier-Bresson, Herbert List, Henry Miller, George Seferis, Walter Gropius, George Katzimbales, and numerous others. The atmosphere was ripe for everything, for discussions, dreams, work, laziness, friendship, with the archaic spirit always present, Miller wrote. When describing the vast rooms with the ornate ceilings, the long dark corridors, and the secret stairways. This ideal place for recollection and creativity was often visited by Gikas' now close friends, Patrick and John Leferma. In 1954, they stayed for almost two years, enjoying the serene environment of the Ceylon Gulf, where Paddy wrote most of his books online. It will be terribly sad leaving, wrote John to Nico. I have adored being here, and felt terribly happy in this house. I can't imagine not sitting in the terrace every evening, watching the shadows change on the hills opposite, or the colour of the rocks and the sea in the moonlight. It really has been too wonderful for us, and the most perfect place for Paddy to work. Along with the Lefermos, there were more friends coming from England, the writer Cyril Connolly, the poet Steven Spender, but also old friends of Gika, such as Angelos Katakouzinos, Kostas Ouranis, Kimon Fryer, George Seferis, all enjoying the charm of Libra. On August 9th, said the host, we sat on the terrace under the starry sky and talked about poetry. We drank wine, we swam, we rode donkeys, we played chess. It was like life in a novel. They were all exceptional people. While caring for restoring the whole house, Gika added his own space, his studio, which was amply lit by two large French arched windows. This is where he painted many of his most important works. His panoramic compositions, those with the square structures and the pyramid-shaped roofs, were brilliantly described by Paddy. Quote, across this chaos of angles in Gika's pictures and in the rocks of Idra run flights of steps which zigzag in the manner of collapsible rulers open at random. Terraces tilted at strange angles to husband the rare raindrops are backed by high irrelevant walls, buttressed like five scores to stem the fall of rock and the elysian winds of midsummer. John Craxton, a frequent visitor of the Idra house, was also captivated by the stunning environment, as well as by the hospitality of his friends. And influenced by Gika, he drew seascape views seen from the mansion's terraces. These drawings would be the core of his large compositions, his symphonies of Idra, which were completed in Crete during the early 1960s and which are among some of Craxton's finest paintings. Maybe the most fascinating years of life on Idra were those of the late 1950s. By that time, Gika had met Barbara Hutchinson and in love, they embarked on a trip around the world. Starting from the United States, they traveled to Mexico, Hawaii, Japan, India, Tibet, absorbed by images which will have an impact on Niko's art, but also on their life in general. When in Greece, they prefer to live together in Idra, having transformed the house into a permanent home, away from the buzz of Athens. Gika continued to be inspired by the images of his enchanted homeland, not only of the long-distance views, but of all vibrating nature around him. The true foliage of Idra, as Tadi said, is the green and silver of olives, each shedding round its contorted trunk a brittle disk of shade. The pale green froth of almond leaves, raised on sooty stems like the legs of Siamese cats. And above all, fig leaves showering down heavy shadows from buckled candelabra branches of dull silver. And yes, clusters of shot rocks, furnished rooms, threatening cactuses, all these were the scenery which was unfolding beyond the gate of the artist's house. The only thing Gika had to do was to wander in it, holding his sketchbook and pencil in his hands. The previously austere mansion with the portraits of the warriors and the memorabilia from the war for independence of 1821 had by now been transformed, thanks to Barbara, into a comfortable home. Gika and Kraxton had painted, as indeed they were doing this in other houses they stayed, the walls, the woodwork, the door frames, even the furniture of the house. Here, in the photograph on your right, you can perhaps see some of this decoration. We worked in the house, making it look marvelous, John said. As a tribute to Barbara, the main bedroom was painted all over with panels of obscure, arcane cypress, richly decorated patterns of false marbling. It looked magnificent. With my help, the woodwork was embellished, the dining room reminded one of an atrium of a villa in Pompeii. This dreamlike atmosphere of life in the Idra mansion was not meant to last. One night in September 1961, when Nico and Barbara were in London for the sets and costume designs for Gilles Persephone at Covent Garden, news came that a massive fire had destroyed the house. Not wishing to see the ruins of his home, Gika sends his close friend John to represent him and to see what could perhaps be miraculously saved. Climbing towards the hill of Camini a few days later, John wrote, I wandered around the still-smoking ruins, trying to recreate the image of the lost house in my memory. He makes lists of items, talks to the neighbors, and organizes the work to be done. He manages even to add some inspiring and hopeful words to his friends. But, he said, and maybe in some strange way, it was a sign for the gods to move on to other places. After all, there is something optimistic about the things that are left. Blank canvases, the studio lamp, rolls of canvas, paints, inks, photos. It doesn't make me despair when I think of these things. Gika never saw the ruins of his house. He returned to Idra a couple of times to be honored by the Hydra, to stay with his friend, artist George Magroides, to sketch over the harbor. It was as if the chapter of Idra, the place of his childhood memories, of his exciting creativity, the place where his special friendships were developed, the place of his first years of life with Barbara, was firmly closed. Interestingly, Padi, as he told us many years later, also never went back to Idra after the fire, never seeing again the place that he had cherished living in. And truly, as John wrote, their friendship was to continue in different places. They would often meet in Athens and in England, but there were also several expeditions in the Aegean islands and on mainland Greece. Padi, who had already explored on foot the entire Billabonese, finds himself in his southern shores, searching for a site for the home of their dreams. He knew money better than anyone. Καρδαμίλη είναι σαν κανένα χωριό που είχα δει στην Ελλάδα, εγγραφεί. And in 1962, he described in his letter to John the discovery of a gently sloping world of the utmost magical beauty, with descending shelves of grass going gently down to the sea, thick with magnificent olive trees and cypresses and lots of other trees. This peninsula is in the middle of a wide open bay. The view is an enormous sweep of sea, bounded by the headlands. The sun is visible until its last gust. Through high clefts of these, one gets glimmering great glimpses of the highest thing of this. But nothing overpowers or impends. There's not a house inside. Nothing but rocks, trees, mountains, and sea. Everything is called Kalamitsi. This would be the place where they would build their glorious home, their perfect refuge. Living in a tent and without electricity, Paddy and Joe would design and supervise the construction of their house. We became kumbari of a master mason called Niko Kolokotronis, and we gathered a small team of stone cutters and builders and settled in tents within Vitruvius and Palatio, and learning what we could from the Mani buildings. Gika and Barbara, you can see them in this picture on your right, were closely involved, even from the very early stages of this architectural creation. When the house was finished, it looked as if it had always been there, among the islands and the cycle streets. Paddy and Joe lived in it for over 40 years, till the end of their lives. As it was for the house on Idra, the fact of paramount importance were the views, the view from the exedras, the views through the windows or through the arches. It must have been the Lutheran's main concern. It was a gaze towards the valley or high up towards the edge of the mountain, but also over the sea waves, when you were sitting on the legendary terrace, which certainly carried bad memories from the terraces of the mansion on Idra. Paddy and Joe would always invite the Gikas to come and stay with them. Do come here if you feel like a change from Athens. It is marvelous now, beautiful autumn weather, paler sunlight, warm bathing, clean air, and Nico and Barbara kept spending many, many fortnights in Kardamini. The southern Peloponnese had enchanted Gika, who sensed the magic of Mani's stone walls, its olive trees and weeds swaying in the lightless breeze, as he was also paying tribute to the mysteries of centuries of the nearby Nistra, which through the stories and accounts of their friend, historian Stevens Ransoman, was a cardinal mythical land of the Peloponnese. The house was a delight to every visitor, and the room with the glazed panels over the trees was the room which the poet John Betjeman called one of the rooms of the world, praising the use of light in it. The visitor's book was officially opened in 1967. The poet George Seferis and his wife Maro, Nico and Barbara Gika were among the very first visitors, followed by John Julius Norwich, Diana Cooper, George Psikondaitis and his wife Sophia, John Braxton, Stephen Spender, Stephen Ransoman, Michael and Tamara Stewart and their daughter Olivia, Suzanne Fielding, the Flemings, Lord Jellicoe, Artemis Cooper, Peter Levi, Bruce Chatman, the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, and many, many more. Each time that Gika arrived in Kardamini, he would bring his painting brushes to use them in the house. In his diary of 1970, he noted that he painted a trompe l'oeil for an alcove in the exterior corridor. On your left, you can see a painting of his which depicts a niche under the arches of the house, and on your right, a photograph showing him at work for Kardamini's decoration. Hundreds of cats live in Kardamini, and John Braxton most definitely shared his love for them with Joan. Numerous are his paintings of them, drawings of them, cards with printed versions of them. And of course, there were books everywhere. Shelves full of dictionaries, bibliographies, books on painting, sculpture, architecture, nature. At last, Paddy said, the lifetime's books would be gathered under one roof and all seem perfect. The covers of Paddy's own books were almost all designed by John Braxton, a further evidence of their close understanding during their long friendship. What was the recipe of the Kardamini magic? Michael William Smith summed it up. Sociability, the beauty of mountains and sea and the house and garden, good food and plenty of drink, remoteness from worldly concerns, swimming in the summer months, walks in the area above the house, playing games and breathing indoors. Evenings were for drinks as the light faded, meals on the terrace in summer, food and wine as the stars came out. The tinkle of ice in glasses, the murmur of good talk, the hoot of an owl, the chatter of sycophants. In the meantime, John Braxton had already found his own ideal destination, the town of Chania in Crete. As he had said, there were three main reasons that compelled him to Crete in 1947 for the first time. To see the palace of King Minos at Knossos, to make a pilgrimage to El Greco's birthplace at Bodele and to look up the first Cretan he had ever met. During the course of his second visit to Crete, John walked over the White Mountain searching to find Paddy's resistance comrades and paint their portraits. As he remembered, it was in 1948 that he actually discovered Crete and painted many portraits of Cretan shepherds, real ones. Nikos Gikas had also been to Crete, spent in the summer of 1953, accompanying his friend, art critic, Christian Zervos. Drawing his inspiration from the island's gardens, he created a series of paintings and drawings with sunflowers and genuses. These works were exhibited in Paris in 1954 at the Galerie Gallier d'Arc and received the art critic's enthusiastic acclaim. When John found his new home in Chania, he wrote to John Lieberman to share his excitement. Very dear John, here I am at last, in my favourite town and in my favourite island. With a recklessness inspired by the generosity, I have rented this empty house in the old harbour of Chania with this view from my window. Crete is a country in its own right and a landscape full of new ideas, forms, shapes and colours. The people of Chania are incredibly kind and helpful. I feel very happy here. And of course he wrote to express his happiness to Parker and Nikos, whom he also invited to come and paint there. I look so much forward to the house in Crete. It is what I've always wanted, longed for it to be a reality, longed for you to see it and use it to work in. The day he had moved in, Margaret Fontaine, famous ballet dancer, who was on Aristotle Onassis' yacht, sends a message to John to join them for dinner. And this is how he found himself talking to Sir Winston Churchill, Onassis' guest of honour. John had friends everywhere, artists, poets, tavern owners, members of the British aristocracy, prominent politicians, shepherds from the remotest areas. He cared for everyone and with his humour and love for life, he was always good company and the heart and soul of a partner. He painted in his small studio at the very top of his house. The wildness of the landscape had inspired him and found his passion for Greece. I can work best, he wrote, in an atmosphere where life is considered more important than art, where life is itself an art. As he was during his first years in Greece, John continued to be charmed by every day people, fishermen, salesmen, in Caffinia, men in Caffinia, sailors and taverners. Paddy, delighted by his paintings still like the Three Sailors, wrote, quote, the faintly absurd uniforms of these sailors have a dash of the commedia dell'arte and especially Watteau's grand gil, particularly so when one sees them wandering around Chania, not knowing where to go, not at all happy at being in Crete, and sad and homesick for their islands and harbours. The look will vanish after a few drinks. The picture has the atmosphere of an enigma. All these Cretans and visitors of Chania became his friends. They would often pass from his house, a house which despite it always seeming half finished and unstable, it definitely transpired grandiosely. As Craxton's biographer Ian Collins described it, it had an eclectic mixture of antique furnishings from rustic Cretan and Baltic Biedermeier to Italian Baroque and English Georgian. Its cosmopolitan atmosphere was Maritime Greek, as if the home of a cultured Haniot trader whose family had also married in the waves of local history. Most of John's works of his mature period were related to ancient myths. Pan, the god of wideness, of shepherds and herds, is present everywhere, while his goats, as lonely creatures, are symbols of independence, endurance and escape. And the gorges, not necessarily the famous ones of Samaria, but the unknown ones in Crete, with the lights piercing vertically from high above, with the hard shadows playing with the colours. These which made Lefermos say that nobody who knows the lines and the mood of these mountains can be surprised that they gave birth to the most brilliant of the Greek schools of icon painting. Those crags almost turned El Greco into an inexplicable phenomenon. A recurring theme for both Pan and John was their love for Crete, and for its people, for its landscape, and most of all for the feeling of freedom that one enjoys there. Nowhere in Greece is the quality of levendia, pride, so clearly manifest, said Lefermos on Crete. For Kraxton, Crete would come to a southern end soon after the military coup of 1967. John, despite being a devout humanitarian and rather detached from politics, was soon persecuted, having to leave Greece. For more than ten years, he would travel to and wander in different countries. Painting works would still exalt the spirit of Crete. Eight years have gone by since the house on Nidra was burned to the ground, when Gika and Barbara found a new refuge in the Greek countryside. During a summer sea excursion around Corfu, together with Barbara's son, Jacob Rothschild, and the family, they discovered in the northern part of the island a deserted estate in a place called Sinies, or Kanonas, a magnificent slope descending towards the picturesque small harbour of Kouloura. The ruined buildings of the old oligpress gave them inspiration for the new home. Nothing could have been more remote, more contrasting to what might have reminded them of either. After the images of sharp rocks and geometrical structures of the Saronic Islands, they chose the lyrical Ionian atmosphere, surrounded by the rich greenery of the humid landscape. Gika and Barbara's early frequent visit to Corfu were often with a company of the Liephermos. These drawings, views of the governor's house and the spianada, the square, are examples of their quest to discover and record charming aspects of their new world. Paddy and Joan evidently loved the island as well as the house, which was later strikingly described by Paddy in his elegant illustrated article titled On Prosperous Island, balancing splendour and rusticity in a Corfu villa. The estate was transformed. New small wings were added to the old joined buildings, and a sequence of inner courtyards and recesses, each gracefully following the other, was reflecting the Western European influence on the architecture of Corfu. Elements from the Renaissance and the Baroque, an amalgam of traditional and learned architecture, reveal this characteristically charming Ionian environment. What was remarkable in the home in Sinies were the floor mosaics designed by Gika for the courtyards. Composed of motifs of diamonds, fishbone and arcs, and made of pebbles, clay bricks and white gravel, they were supervised by the artists who would often improvise on the use of materials, of shapes and of symmetry. Their main concern was the shaping of their overall environment. Gika had said that in a way they had approached the whole landscaping by following the principles for gardens described by Xenophon for his estate, in requiring sculptures as elements of decoration and evoking a certain nostalgia. Paddy, their friend, comes to help with the planning and setting of their villa gardens. Here you can see them directing the installation of the sculpture in the courtyard. And here, together with Gika, where they are lifting the top of the large table with beautifully painted elements of the various wings. In fact, Paddy had written endless notes, illustrated with his very own drawings, with suggestions to the Gikas of how to form the outdoors environment in Sinies, and especially for the verandas, the exedra and the belvederes, with a view over the sea. Here is an example. Quote, pebble, mosaic, brick, slabs, whatever it is, should never just pitter out into raw earth on the same level. It should end in something definite, a step or a wall or a border of stone, but always a change of height. And the best of all, here in this great balustrade on which, ouzo, or whiskey in hand, you could sit and peer down at the basking sea of flowers and grass. The belvederes would indeed be a central element of the estate, with chiseled stone seats and stone paintings, beautifully placed sculptures, often echoing pictures of Cardamino. The exedra had in fact given the opportunity for the Gikas and the Liepermos, shared strong interest in architecture and landscaping, to be creatively applied. As were the other houses of Idra, Creek, and Cardamino, the house on Corfu was also hosting numerous friends. Staying there was described by Paddy as living in midsummer night's dream, chanting by candlelight, sitting on the stone ledges under the moonlit stars. Here you can see the Liepermos, the Jellicos and the Stewards, the actress Peggy Ashcroft, Lynne Seymour of the Royal Ballet, John Craxton, Rudolf Nureyev and David Rylance in boat trips during the summer months to unexplored sea coves and headlands. In their abundant correspondence Paddy notes to Nikos, Joan and I are still afloat with the charm of cignes. It gets more beautiful all the time, as though it were spontaneously unfolding its own predestined splendour and grace and magic. The house was filled with rare additions, fascinating objects, treasures of the sea, drawings and watercolours collected by Jacob Rothschild, some by Angelos Kagelinas and Edward Lear, with themes inspired by the Greek pole for independence, pole from views of the Ionian islands. For Giga, perhaps the most vital part of the house was his isolated studio. In this bright octagonal room, he painted works which were distinctly different from those of his previous periods. He would not stay indoors. His walks often with Baba were a daily ritual, exploring the attractions of the nearby countryside. His editorial narrative had changed. His brushstrokes were now sliding, his lines were flowing and lyrical, the previous rigid angles and zigging veins of Idra were now being replaced by smooth curves reflecting Khufu's dense nature. His paintings with widely curled trunks let the light and its shadows penetrate and reveal through twirled branches tightly holding one another, or zooming in stones and rocks with their masses and rifts, also inspired Giga to paint a series of their elaborate variations. John, Paddy and Joan had spent long periods with Baba and Nico in this idyllic refuge of Khufu. Paddy had actually written a good part of his book, Between the Woods and the Water, in the country house in Cygnets. In his introduction, he wrote, devoted thanks for kindness and heaven during restless literary displacements to Barbara and Nico Giga, to whom this book is dedicated, for many weeks among the lodges and swathes of Khufu. And truly, Khufu had been a place of exhilarating creativity, memorable conversations, a magical place for rest and hospitality. As the Lefermos at Craxton often wrote in their letters, it offered them countless moments of inspiration and reverie in every season, at every hour of the day, marking the life of everyone who visited. In September 1989, Barbara died in London. John Craxton arrived to stay with Nico for a few months until he left for Athens. As Giga never returned to Idra after the catastrophic fire, he didn't want to return to Khufu after Barbara's death. He would spend his later years in Athens, preparing the small gallery, always with the help of John. He would look after his donation to the vernacular museum. He would see Paddy and Joan every now and then. He would meet his friends, his old pupils, till his end in September 1994, in his house of 40 years on Criazoto Street. The Lefermos lived in Cardamere. They traveled to England. Many of their friends described pleasant encounters with them during the 1990s. Joan died in 2003, leaving her wonderful photographs to witness her thrilling life. John continued to meet with Paddy. He painted compositions of remarkable energy, kept traveling between England and Greece, was increasingly interested in Byzantine art until the end, which came at the age of 87 in London, concluding, as Ian Collins remarked, a lifetime of a wandering artist whose life was defined by his long-lasting friendships. Paddy, the last one of the three, lived in Cardamere, always resourceful, writing to his countless friends with the anxiety of the infamous third volume perhaps always in his mind. I remember quite well all three of them in their very late years. Paddy, lonely but optimistic, he enjoyed the company of his visitor friends whom he would cordially welcome in Cardamere, often giving them his books with his hand-drawn medications. John, always robust and cheerful, with his thoughts filled by members of life in Crete, was facing his last years in London with humor and tenderness. Giga, the most contribute award, a destroyed melancholy, who was staying late at night listening to tape recordings of the classics. He kept reading letters treasured from the past. Sometimes I would ask him about things before the war, about the search for greatness they were trying to shape, and he would get anxious in case all things they had envisioned had now gone straight, and I would feel sorry for having asked. All three of them have left a nerve robust and profound, images and thoughts with abundant wisdom, harmony, and passion. But it was not just their artworks and texts, all those filled with love for Louis, which excite and move us today. It is their personal secret world, the world of their photographs, the sketches, the notes and the letters, the dedications and the confessions, the worries and the hopes. This personal hidden world which reveals and ultimately revives today a rare sense of friendship between them, as well as a whole era in Greece of unsurpassed and perhaps unrepeatable charm. Thank you. |
