Description

About the artwork: Thesmophoria. Eurydice Maria Ventouri is a Greek surrealist artist. She is celebrated for her vivid paintings with extraordinary compositions, in which she merges abstraction, representation and reinvention. Eurydice’s works are large in scale and her surrealistic compositions have figurative sources.

Over the course of Eurydice’s career, she continuously experimented, shifting her style to explore new techniques and forms of expression. Such regular reinvention led to a body of paintings and drawings and is characterized by boldness and innovation. The artist says: ‘’ Many of my works have no narrative. So I say that they are objects in themselves, that did not come to tell us anything about the world we live in, but may subconsciously communicate to us through strange unconscious paths of forgotten parameters’.

For Eurydice Greek mythology is an inexhaustible source of iconographic inspirations with new symbols and versions. The Thesmophoria were a religious festival dedicated to Demeter, the goddess of harvest and fertility, and her daughter Persephone. It was celebrated probably as early as the 11th century, even before the Ionian migration into Greece. It was a fertility festival to ensure fertile land and good harvest. Only women who were married to citizens were allowed to participate.