Virgo Vasileiou (1925 – 2001)

The artist Virginia (Virgo) Vasileiou was born in 1925 in Athens. Her father, Manolis Vasileiou, originally from Aegio, was a civil servant – he worked at the Greek Post Office – and had a degree in law, and her mother Anna Theodosiou was from Hydra. Virgo had two other siblings, Kalliopi and Vasos, and the family lived in Koukaki. “Our house was a corner house. So, on Morea Street we had a clear field. We could talk without interruption. We told stories, tales, we chattered endlessly. Around us, the half-darkness dominated. The streets weren’t lit then. But on moonlit nights, the landscape changed. It became idyllic. And the mood became more tender. In the corner of our house, an old olive tree was growing. (…) In the illuminated shutters of the houses you could see, like in Karagiozis, the shadows of their occupants”.

During her childhood, she lived for a while in Syros and Santorini, -due to her father’s transplantation- where she attended primary school lessons in the Catholic monastery. Virgo describes this particular experience of education in her testimony: “You had no choice, you had to start primary school classes in the Catholic Monastery, where nuns taught almost all lessons in French. I still remember a few; “soeur Celestine”, “soeur Betty”, who painted the colors on the church statues when they faded. She would limp a little and I would follow her like a shadow so I could watch her work. She held a fascination for me, that ability of hers. We were taught Greek only once or twice a week. Mr. Gyzis, who came from a noble old island family, tried to make us spell and read properly”. Her inclination toward art was visible from that time on.

As soon as she completed her studies, she entered the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Athens, in the academic year 1941-1942. At the same time, in December 1941, she started working as a civil servant at the Social Insurance Foundation (IKA). During the German Occupation, she was organised in the National Resistance movement, initially joining the ranks of the National Solidarity, the first resistance organisation to operate throughout the Occupation. Her main concern was the care of the wounded and disabled war invalids, political prisoners and exiles and their families. It was an organisation made up mainly of women and was concerned with providing material support – nutrition, medical care, clothing – for vulnerable groups. Then, in 1943, Virgo Vasileiou joined the United Panhellenic Youth Organization (EPON), the largest resistance organization of young people during the Occupation, founded in February 1943. It was arrested in December 1944 – during the December events (Dekemvriana), the clashes between the Greek ELAS guerrillas and the British Army – and remained imprisoned until February 1945.

Virgo Vasileiou remained in prison and then in exile from January 1948 to mid-1953. During her imprisonment, she contracted tuberculosis and spent some time in the prison infirmary. Her artistic inclination manifested itself in prison, as she systematically drew portraits of her fellow inmates. Indeed, in the absence of photographs, her sketches were often used in the official documents of the women prisoners. “In prison, I was deafening myself by drawing portrait sketches all the time. I don’t remember their number anymore. All the prisoners went through the makeshift photo studio. Artist and models, seated facing each other on stumps, transformed into stools. Not at all comfortable and terribly tiresome. At one time they began to send from the provinces to the prison administration applications for the release of prisoners, signed by their neighbours, and on the application, there had to be a photograph, with its authenticity guaranteed by Petrandi (the prison director). Strange as it may seem, the fact is that the portrait – sketch, took the place of the photographic portrait and was formalised with the prison seal and the signature of the person in charge. My fatigue from the intensity of the attention was great and I was missing the opportunity to stretch my legs a bit, strolling around the yard like the others. And then the models weren’t all that interesting. But I had to make sure that none were excluded.”

For a while, she was transferred to Patras Prison, where the conditions of detention were even worse. Her fragile health was shaken and she returned to Athens for medical treatment. The experience of incarceration defines her on many levels and the trauma is evident when she records her memories many years later.

“I went back around again to the nightmarish past times. Experiences like that scar you like burning seals on your body and soul. It’s hard to forget, to erase the past with a single finger. The world of prison and exile is an endless procession of women. Each with her own world, her own history, her own root. You wondered how most of them endured and dealt with the unbelievably cruel blows of their lives. Each prisoner carried her own drama and was difficult to express. In the visiting room, through the double screen, they each waited patiently for their turn to talk to their relative. There behind the double, thick as tulle wire, everyone was shouting, visitors and prisoners alike. You listened thus, unwillingly, to the requests, the pleadings, the news concerning the woman next to you. There were no secrets. Everything circulated, good news and bad news. We lived in a hellhole, a strange commune.”

When she served her sentence, she was not released but was deported to the small island of Trikeri in the Pagasitic Gulf, near the city of Volos, which served as a place of exile. Life on the island, although difficult, was not comparable to life in prison. The escape in nature was a lifesaver for Virgo.  She reports: ”the island was truly a paradise on earth. The vegetation, dense and unspoilt, had a beauty that was totally unique. I had never seen so many olive trees and flowers. (…) I would disappear from the camp with a long notebook in my hands and a well-sharpened pencil. And I’d forget myself drawing endlessly, until I thought that the company would be worried. I always came back with a finished or half-drawn sketch. Then like a crazed woman, I finished it from memory, while I still kept the memory alive. I was almost happy, as if I had come back from battle carrying booty with me (…) After the years of confinement and overcrowding in Averof prison, the brightly lit island seemed like a fairy tale’.

After many years – in 1988 – Virgo Vasileiou published an album with her pencil drawings from Trikeri. As traumatic and defining as the experience of exile was, it was also a source of inspiration for her artistic creation and a way out of her difficult daily life.  She mentions of Trikeri’s drawings that “they seem to bear witness to a time when nostalgia bled the soul, and the mind desperately sought a shelter. I love these and keep them as a little treasure.”

            On the island, the exiled women organised their daily lives by participating in various workshops that served their needs. They were also involved in sports, had a choir, performed in theatre and gave lessons to illiterate women and young children who lived with their mothers in exile. “So when the camp was empty, and there were about fifty women left, I went into all the garages: the mattress shop, the shoemaker’s shop, the glue shop. I turned necessity into dignity and joined in.” Virgo was discharged from exile in mid-1953.

After the exile she worked with the well-known engraver Tassos (Alevisos) at the graphic arts factory of ELKA and studied with him in engraving on upright and oblique wood. “At that time Tasos gave me a piece of wood for upright wood engraving. He had used it on one side (…) the other side was clean and smooth. I held it in my hands awkwardly and asked the advice of a young engraver of C. Angelopoulos, a pupil of Kefallinos. (…) He asked me if I had chisels and of course I replied negatively. He advised me where to get them and gave me a small piece of stone for sharpening them… Then I engraved a few lines. And suddenly, instead of just lines, I started to carve a small landscape of Trikeri’s olive trees. When I saw it printed, I was delighted and surprised.” In Tasos’ workshop, she met her future husband, painter Nestor Papanikolopoulos – with whom they married in 1968 in Paris -.

She also worked as a painter at the pottery factory “Kerameikos” and there she was also involved in the manufacture of mosaics. Her interactions with artists at the factory, with painters and ceramists, influenced her and opened new horizons. Although the conditions of daily life were intensive and demanding, it was a job that gave her pleasure and provided her with a living. “I was left free to choose my subjects without controlling the time my work required. And so I started doing mosaics or mosaic imitations. It was tedious and painful but it left me free to do whatever I preferred. (…) In the mornings as I set off unhurriedly to be at the factory at 5.30, I usually wore galoshes. The area was covered in mud and Neo Faliro was degraded, it looked like a dead state. Half-ruined mansions, unoccupied and uninhabited, looked haunted. It was a bit like a piece of a fairy tale or a forgotten melody of the old days with fairies and dances in ruined castles.  Half asleep and still sleepy, I crossed the long streets and dreamed. (…) In time I learned to love this route”.

During the colonels’ dictatorship, Virgo and her husband lived and worked in Paris. They managed to travel a few days after the dictatorship was declared and avoided re-arrest. For a time she worked in the studio of the Greek painter Nikos Kessanlis, doing restorations of paintings. She and her husband also worked on restorations of rare Greek and Russian icons. Among the works they undertook there was the construction of a large mural in a Greek restaurant in Paris called “The Garden of Theophilos”. “At that time we were working every day, in a shop- a kind of tavern. His new boss aspired to turn it into a political hangout. And his artistic advisor, a painter from the community, recommended us to do the decorating. Our models were the frescoes of Theophilos, the popular Mytilenian craftsman”.

            During their stay abroad, they travel around Europe and visit museums. Her exposure to classic works of art has been a very defining and meaningful experience as she experiences art and appreciates its impact over time: ‘whenever I immerse myself in bitter memories, I try to relive the journeys that gave us something of a blessing at every step. (…) In Florence there are those wide, restful steps designed by Michelangelo. (…) and then you don’t know what to first admire of the works that flood his city. We were ecstatic in front of a wooden Christ, a work of his youth barely known”.

During the post-war period, the couple returned from Paris and settled in Athens, but a fire destroyed a large part of their house in Koukaki. Virgo faces many health problems, the main one being heart failure. Her fragile health does not allow her to deal with many things. However, as a result of this fragile health, in 1999, she published a book with her memories, mainly from exile but also with scattered incidents from her life. This book grew out of her need to exercise her memory after a stroke she had suffered. The original intention was not to publish it, as for her it was just memory exercises, however her partner arranged for the book to be published. Recording these retrieved memories was not an easy task for her, it was rather painful. She mentions: “The memories are coming together one after another. One underneath countless others. You need to dig.  And after so many years of clarity, it is both painful and revealing to stop remembering. And the memory coming back seems like a sudden flash in a dark space. Like solving, all at once, a difficult riddle that it might have been better if you hadn’t found its solution.”

Virgo Vasileiou was a self-taught visual artist who drew, painted and also worked in sculpture, miniature art and illustration. The world of visual arts fascinated her since she was young and although she did not attend Fine Arts School as she had dreamed, she nevertheless pursued them professionally. Her participation with a few works in group exhibitions in Moscow and Paris was due to the efforts of others, including her husband, painter Nestor Papanikolopoulos.

He died in Athens on 8 March 2001.