ON NOVEMBER 27, the exhibition ‘Word and the Place’, by Dimitris Sevastakis, was inaugurated at the National Library of Greece at the SNFCC (Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre). Nikitas Kaklamanis, President of the Hellenic Parliament inaugurated the exhibition, and described Sevastakis as “An essayist of art and politics. A tireless and enthusiastic worker who submits his own intellectual labour with faith and perseverance in a stable world of ideas, always respected regardless of whether someone agrees or disagrees with him. All of us here tonight have the privilege of following him on an adventure.” Kaklamanis went on to say that if every product of the artist is to be the expression of an adventure of his soul, then the current exhibition by Sevastakis is indeed a great adventure. Following Kaklamanis’s speech, Sevastakis focused concisely on the significance of unbridled emotion in the art-making process.

Dimitris Sevastakis (born 1960), studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts, at the workshops of Dimitris Mytaras and Yiannis Moralis. He currently teaches at the School of Architecture of the National Technical University (Metsovio) of Athens. Parallel to his painting and the realization of many solo art exhibitions, Sevastakis is also a writer, and was also an MP (2015-2019).

The current exhibition of Dimitris Sevastakis, ‘Word and the Place’, comprises over 200 works, which have been created in the past decade or so, and which are being exhibited for the first time at the National Library of Greece at the SNFCC. The exhibition is made up of two main units: The first, ‘Word’, is made up of a triptych: imaginary literary heroes, writers, readers. The writers are both Greek and other, alive and deceased, many of which are also friends or family friends of the artist. From Penelope Delta, to Bukowski, T.S. Eliot to William S. Burroughs, each personality is sensitively transcribed and perceived.

In terms of the imaginary literary heroes in the ‘Word’ section, Sevastakis chose to concoct via the painting process, a series of portraits of people on the borders of society, who could become literary heroes, maybe inspiring a writer to include them in his literary adventures. The third series of portraits is of readers, and in this series, what prevails, is Sevastakis’s self-portraits, as well as the portraits of his wife, his daughter, his father and mother, plus a few friends. The self-portraits in particular reveal a soul-searching which is part and parcel of the self-portrait process. Colours both break up and create form, thoughts and emotions influence the picture-plane.

The second part of the exhibition, called ‘Place’, is made up of landscapes. During a tour at the exhibition opening, Sevastakis spoke of how the landscape allows you to lose yourself and find yourself, and indeed, in these landscapes especially the plein-air landscapes, most of them created with oil pastels, one feels that the artist has become one with nature in a synaesthetic manner, allowing himself to be taken over by the sounds, colours, the elements, and quickly transcribing them via pastel on paper in most cases, in order to capture the moment forever, but simultaneously surrendering to that moment of pure creativity, feeling and observation.

The main motifs and characteristics of Sevastakis’s past work, are still present in many of his new larger landscapes, which are oils on stretched canvas: the tendency towards exploring blue, a colour associated with the night, with the sea, with spirituality, which exudes calmness and inspires mind over matter. But blue can also be about the blues, and within these canvases, there is a melancholy flare of the imagination at times, which takes us to other places.

Echoes from a past solo exhibition, realized in the Nineties, in which Sevastakis had focused on the golden jackals of Samos, can also be found in the current exhibition. However the jackals have now become wolves, in ‘Word and the Place’, and their silhouettes are backdropped by the sea, or they may even be found swimming in the sea, with only their head above water.

Sevastakis explained at the opening that painting is a solitary process, and that he is a solitary person, spending hours upon hours in the studio, painting. This is indeed the case of many a painter. That space of the studio is a sacred space, where the creative mind travels to new destinations, plodding along on that mysterious and fluid creative journey full of twists and unexpected turns. The artist is in fact a bit like the lonesome ship found in many of Sevastakis’s paintings, near the upper left edge of his seascapes and landscapes, travelling to who knows where, with faith in the creative process, being each artist’s mast.

• ‘Word and the Place’, by Dimitris Sevastakis, runs at the National Library of Greece (on the 4^th floor), at the SNFCC, 364 Syggrou Avenue, 17674 Kallithea. Exhibition dates: November 27, 2025 – February 28, 2026. Open Monday-Sunday, 9.30-20.00. Free entrance.

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