The National Gallery of Greece presents the exhibition Freedom at its Nafplio branch, dedicated to the work of acclaimed painter Maria Filopoulou. The exhibition reflects the artist’s enduring drive to create Mediterranean scenes and intimate natural settings, celebrating the harmony of nature, immersed in light and rhythm.
After studying under Leonardo Cremonini at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris (1984–1988), Filopoulou began to explore natural interiors—geometric compositions that marked the beginning of her pursuit of a freer, more intuitive approach to painting. This practice gradually evolved into immersive landscapes that foreground the dialogue between art and nature, with the sea and water emerging as central motifs.
Her subject matter—intimate coastal retreats, ferry passengers, and swimmers—conveys emotional depth and fleeting impressions, echoing traditions of French landscape painting as well as Modernist influences. Through meticulous attention to visual sensation and color harmony, Filopoulou invites viewers to reflect on their personal connection with the natural world.
Art historian and Director of the National Gallery, Syrago Tsiara, observes that the motif of bathers has a long-established presence in art history. The relationship between the human body and water presents a timeless artistic challenge—one that involves the nuanced interplay of color, composition, and light.
During the era of European modernism, artists moved beyond academic representation, often detached from mythological or orientalist themes, to reaffirm the artistic value of the nude. This shift emphasized a sense of freedom, experimentation with structure, style, and morphology, and sought to reconnect the human body with the natural world on new aesthetic and conceptual terms. The nude, once confined to symbolic or erotic readings, came to be redefined as a plastic form in space—simultaneously sensual and formal.
In reference to Filopoulou’s practice, Syrago Tsiara highlights the artist’s passion, technical precision, and unwavering commitment to her chosen visual language. Drawing from photographic realism, advertising aesthetics, urban visual culture, and cinematic imagery, Filopoulou creates compelling images of a postmodern Arcadian utopia, foregrounding the cultural significance of depicting the nude body in harmonious coexistence with the natural world.
In this context, the nude figure emerges as a concrete symbol of innocence and natural purity—an idealized image of human beings liberated from social constraints and prudery. These figures inhabit an imagined world where they surrender hedonistically to sunlight and embrace the elemental freedom of living within the sea and nature.
The exhibition Freedom encapsulates Filopoulou’s intimate engagement with the natural world, expressed through vivid, sensorial works that bridge landscape and lived experience. Bathed in vibrant hues of blue, green, and yellow, Filopoulou’s compositions captivate the viewer through intricate brushwork and a luminous palette that imparts a spiritual and metaphysical resonance. Motivated by an inner drive for redemptive, self-reflective expression, she constructs dynamic compositions that balance both permitted and forbidden juxtapositions, generating expressive tension and emotional depth. These surfaces reveal nature’s invisible forces, awakening personal memories and inviting a contemplative response.
In her representations of waterfalls, pools, and natural basins, Filopoulou employs the chromatic and symbolic resonance of blue to immerse the viewer in the unseen energies of the natural world. Her practice extends into sculpture, wherein she models nude bathers with a refined sculptural sensibility and precision. Through this medium, she endeavors to distill and elevate the essence of nature. The volumetric presence of her figures echoes the textures, forms, and shifting light of the natural world, reinforcing her ongoing dialogue with the environment, which evokes the textures, contours, and mutable light inherent in natural environments, underscoring her enduring dialogue with the environment.
Featured Photo: On the boat
D.T.
TAGS: ARTS
