Persephone, Kore

Stages of Persephone (2)


Kore
Daughter of Demeter and Zeus
Wife of Hades
Queen of the underworld



Mixed techniques, 2021
37 x 34 x 32 cm

Eleusinian Persephone

Stages of Persephone (3)

Kore
Daughter of Demeter and Zeus
Wife of Hades
Queen of the underworld
Main actor in the Eleusinian mysteries,
with her mother Demeter

Mixed techniques, 2021
26 x 26 x 34 cm

Untouchable Artemis

Stages of Artemis (1)



Goddess of the hunt, wilderness and chastity
Daughter of Leto and Zeus
Twin sister of Apollo







Mixed techniques, 2021
59 x 45 x 29 cm

Another (H)era

Stages of Hera (2)
 

 Hera - goddess of women, marriage, family and childbirth. Sister and wife of Zeus. The Greek poet Kallimachos told that their wedding feast lasted three thousand years.
 

 Hera was one of the three women (together with Athena and Aphrodite) who took part of a contest for the prize of a golden apple, addressed "To the fairest". Hera didn't win. These "Apple-Gate" eventually led to the Trojan war, because the winner (Aphrodite) promised juror Paris, Prince of Troy, the most beautiful woman on earth. Unfortunately that woman (Helen) was already married with Menelaos. King of Sparta. A clear example of bribery with far-reaching consequences.
 

 It must not have been easy to be a Hera, especially not with an iffy character like Zeus around you. Hera is carrying the weight on her tiny shoulders. I have tried to capture this conceptual message in the visualization of this sculpture.

 

 

Mixed techniques, 2022
 67 x 37 x 42 cm

Unstoppable Asklepios

 

Asklepios is the son of Apollo. His mother Koronis,  was a princess of the Thessalian kingdom of Phlegyantis. Apollo was a jealous god. When he heard that his lover was to marry a mortal, he punished her by burning. Before Koronis was completely incinerated, Apollo rescued the unborn infant from the flames.

The question of the human condition and the search for limits of the human, in order to overcome them, is nowhere more evident than with Asklepios. Asklepios is the blessed physician, educated by the centaur Chiron.  He is the symbol of medicine.  His abilities push Zeus to the limit. Asklepius started bringing back to life dead people like Tyndareus, Kapaneus, Glaukus, Hymenaeus, Lycurgus and others. 

Hades, god of the underworld, accused Asklepios for stealing his subjects and complained to his brother Zeus about it. Zeus was afraid that Asklepios would teach the art of resurrection to other humans as well. Immortality was the basic competence of the gods. If that fell away there would be nothing left to distinguish men and gods. Zeus killed Asklepios with his thunderbolt. 

After Asklepios's death, Zeus placed his body among the stars as the constellation Ophiuchus ("the Serpent Holder") Later, however, upon Apollo's request, Zeus resurrected Asklepios as a god and gave him a place on Olympus.

Asklepios is  associated with a snake-entwined staff,  the esculape (from "Aesclepius") , a symbol that we still know and use to this day, for example on the windscreens of doctors' cars or in the name of pharmacies. 

Mixed techniques, 2022
30 x 21 x 30 cm

Iphigenia at Aulis

Stages of Iphigenia (2)



Iphigenia is the eldest daughter of Klytaimnestra and Agamemnon. The latter is army commander of the Greeks in the war against Troy. He lures his daughter under false pretenses to Aulis where the fleet cannot sail due to lack of favorable winds. Iphigenia will be sacrificed to appease the gods.

 

Mixed techniques, 2022
65 x 45 x 42 cm

Unscrupulous Agamemnon

Stages of Agamemnon (2)

Agamemnon is the leader of a Greek alliance against Troy. Troops are mobilized from all parts of Greece. Not everyone is very willing. Odysseus, king of Itaka, who has just become the father of a son, plays that he is insane. However, his intentions are understood. Another Greek hero, Palamedes, recognizes the ruse. Later, Odysseus will unscrupulously avenge Palamedes. The great Greek hero Achilles also tried to escape the war, mainly under pressure from his mother Thetis. She placed her son with King Lykomedes, where he hid in girls' clothes among the king's daughters. However, Odysseus discovered that.

Forced participation in pointless wars (the latter is a pleonasm) is a phenomenon of all times, unfortunately. War is saying goodbye to humanity, to empathy, to dignity, and to reason. Lessons from history are, unfortunately still, apparently hard to learn. Man is often predator of man.

Mixed techniques, 2022
28 x 20 x 28 cm

Hephaistos, blacksmith

Stages of Hephaistos (2)

Blacksmith of the gods

He forges the most beautiful artworks with fire and heavy hammers, and with a glow on his cheeks


Mixed techniques, 2022
27 x 21 x 30 cm

Stubborned Achilles

Stages of Achilles (1) 

Achilles was the mortal son of Peleus, a Greek king, and Thetis, a sea nymph or goddess. He was the strongest Greek hero in the war for Troy and a central character of Homer's Iliad. A hot-tempered character and a stiffhead. He was almost invincible, apart from a problem with his vulnerable heel, that eventually became fatal to him. We still call such a weak spot, even when it comes to non-physical matters, an Achilles heel. The Homeric epic only covers a few weeks of the decade-long war, and does not narrate Achilles' death. It begins with Achilles' withdrawal from battle after being dishonoured by Agamemnon, the commander of the Greek forces. Homer describes the duel between Achilles and Hektor, the prins of Troy and intended heir to the throne. Achilles was furious because Hektor killed his friend and lover Patroklos in a duel. 


Mixed techniques, 2022
28 x 22 x 30 cm

Ubiquitous Pallas Athena

Stages of Pallas (1)

Pallas Athena is one of the most important Olympic goddesses. She was born from the forehead of her father Zeus. In the war of the Greeks against Troy, she was on the Greek side. She was Odysseus' chief counselor, and she is associated with wisdom, warfare, and handicraft. Athena's epithet Pallas is probably a reference to the giant Pallas who was killed by Athena in the "Battle of the Titans".  Pallas was depicted as a giant goat. Athena incorporated his goatskin into her shield.

My sculpture is a fragment of the head of Pallas Athena. I have omitted identifying elements, like her helmet or lance. I have tried to portray her differentiated and complex personality. 

Fragmentary design of sculpture, or the "non finito", was not a common practice in sculpture, although the “deliberately unfinished” was used by Donatello and Michelangelo, among others. For the first time in our modern art history, it was applied by the French sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840 – 1917). 

Mixed techniques, 2022
23 x 26 x 25 cm

Pivotal Briseis

 Stages of Briseis (1)

Briseis is a pivotal figure in Homer's Iliad. She was the wife of Mines, a king's son in Lyrnessos (near Thebe). During the Trojan War, her husband and brothers, among others, were killed by Achilles. She was kidnapped and assigned to Achilles as spoils of war, concubine and slave. After Agamemnon, the Greek army commander, was forced by an oracle ruling to give up his own spoils of war, Chryseis, he forced Achilles to hand over Briseis to him. Achilles then withdrew from the battle for Troy, which caused the Greeks heavy defeats and losses. The Iliad deals with this episode. The Iliad is described as a hero's epic. In fact, it is an account of an imperialist war, of dubious characters, of rape, murder and manslaughter, and of slavery. If Greek mythology is the cradle of our Western civilization, as is sometimes said, then it is not surprising that we are dealing now with so many abuses. 

Mixed techniques, 2023
60 x 35 x 30 cm 

Chryseis, sister in fate

Stages of Chryseis (2)


 

Mixed techniques, 2023
63 x 35 x 25 cm

Egg born Helena

Stages of Helena  (1)

Helena, daughter of Zeus and Leda (Swan) was born from an egg. She married king Menelaos of Sparta after a competition between suitors for her hand. All of her suitors were required to swear an oath promising to provide military assistance to the winner, if Helen were ever stolen from him. Her abduction by Paris of Troy forced the Greeks to get her back, at least, that's the romantic version for the outbreak of the Trojan War. Paris was killed in action, and in Homer's account Helen was reunited with Menelaos. It is obvious that the independence of Troy, in relation to the Greek confederation, and the wealth and prosperity of Troy, have been a more important inducement for an imperialist war. 

Elements of Helen’s biography come from Aristophanes, Cicero, Euripides, and Homer (in both the Iliad and the Odyssey). Her story reappears in Book II of Virgil's Aeneid. 

 
Mixed techniques, 2023
65 x 34 x 20 cm

Odysseus' lost men

Odysseus’ men 

Odysseus took part with twelve ships and about 600 men in the war of Troy in the twelfth or thirteenth century BC. It was a trade war between an alliance of Greeks and the wealthy city of Troy, which, due to its strategic location, controlled the access of the Mediterranean Sea to the Black Sea. Estimates of the number of ships and crew range from approximately 15,000 to 100,000 people. Agamemnon was the commander of the joint army of the Greeks. 

Of the men of Odysseus, only he himself returned. Wars have no winners, only losers. His men were killed in the war and on their journey home. The Cyclops Polyphemos devours six men; the gigantic Laystrigons pelt the fleet and only Odysseus' ship is spared. Elpenor dies on the island of Aiaia of Circe; the monster Scylla devours six men; on Thrinakia, the island of the sun god Helios, Odysseus' men slaughter the sun god's cattle. Helios asks for help and revenge from the sea god Poseidon to sink the ship in a storm. Everyone perishes, only Odysseus survives; Odysseus washes ashore on the island of Kalypso and stays in her company and enchantment for seven years, finally moving on with a raft; That raft comes also in dire straits. He washes ashore at the Phaiacians. What's left are memories. Homer later uses them, from the preserved sources of singers and storytellers, for his unsurpassed epic. The friendly Phaiacian people take him back to where he once lived and where he was a king, where his wife Penelope held out against pushy suitors all these years, where his son was and where he still had friends: Ithaca. 

 

mixed techniques, 2023
40 x 24 x 25 cm

Transitional Hekate

Stages of Hekate (2)

The high status of Hekate, as the most esteemed among the gods, according to Hesiod, changed at last but she remained a goddess of protection and destruction, of fertility and of death. Hekate ruled over border areas. People honored her and sought her advice at intersections and gates. She is strongly connected to magic, later also to sorcery. Medea of Kolchis was a priestess of Hekate, the dark goddess.

 


Mixed techniques, 2023
45 x 25 x 32 cm