The Making of Aretaieia: An Interview with George Petrides

In October 2024, visitors to the Aretaieio Hospital in Athens, Greece will find themselves walking past a larger-than-life pregnant woman finished in gold. The piece, entitled Aretaieia (which both mirrors the name of the hospital and translates to virtue), is a monument to maternal love. I spoke to the sculptor George Petrides about his newest public sculpture.

Tell us a little about the inspiration behind Aretaieia:

The hospital is one of the leading institutions in Athens with a focus on women, particularly pregnant women, so I started with my own mother, Yota Petrides. I wanted the statue to embody the love felt between a mother and child, so I’m very honored that the statue will stand in the very city where my mother gave birth to me many years ago.

You often use loved ones as the starting point of your works, right?

Yes, that’s right. I think that focusing on one person in creating the sculpture gives the work authenticity and life, and my loved ones frequently indulge me by being excellent models. You can see some more examples of this in my exhibit Hellenic Heads. For Heroines of 1821, I wanted to convey the strength, defiance and resilience of three female leaders in the War of Independence (Manto, Laskarina and the overlooked Domna Visvizi of Thrace) and found a modern Greek woman to sit for the piece, a woman with similar personality traits: My wife! When I was sculpting Archon, which references the Byzantine Period, I looked not just to the colossal heads of Constantine the Great at the Capitoline Museums in Rome and The Met in New York, but also to photographs of my father as a young sea captain, working for Goulandris shipping interests, embodying leadership and clear vision ahead.

You mentioned Hellenic Heads. Can you tell us a little more about that exhibit? 

Sure. The Hellenic Heads are a personal exploration of my personal roots, through over-lifesize head sculptures that have been inspired by six important periods in Greek history spanning 2,500 years. This series is a vehicle for, and the result of, my search for the influences that have shaped me and the people closest to me. I chose six periods in history that could be deemed to have ongoing influence on contemporary Greeks: the Classical Period, the Byzantine Period, the Greek War of Independence, the Destruction of Smyrna, the Nazi occupation and Greek Civil War, and finally, the Present. I researched each period, considering artifacts, family stories, and historical photographs. I looked at sculptural precedents for inspiration in the major museums of the world–in Athens, of course, but also in New York, Paris and Rome. 

The exhibition is about to open at its fifth venue, in Venice, Italy, where it is being presented by The Embassy of Greece in Rome and The Hellenic Institute of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Studies of Venice, in cooperation with The Honorary Consulate of Greece in Venice and The Greek Orthodox Community of Venice and with the support of The Orthodox Archdiocese of Italy.

Could you explain what you mean by sculptural precedents?

I often draw inspiration from historic pieces, ranging from the Kouroi to Rodin, not to make a copy, but to see how an accomplished sculptor dealt with similar issues. Sometimes this helps me find my “way in” with my sculpture, although the end result may bear little similarity. For example, when I was starting on my piece related to the Destruction of Smyrna, The Catastrophe, I was thinking about my grandmother and how she might have looked and felt in September 1922 when the city was burned and she lost her whole way of life. Call it serendipity; on my drive back from Monaco, where I had a solo exhibition, to Athens, I stopped in Florence for a few nights. There, at the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, I saw two works that left me in awe: Donatello’s Habbakuk (1423-26) and Michelangelo’s Deposition (1547-1555). When you look at The Catastrophe, you may pick up on subtle references to both masterpieces.

And you had sculptural precedents when you made Aretaieia as well?

Yes, definitely, most of them Greek in this case to reflect its eventual home in Athens. From the Acropolis Museum, I drew on the face and hair design of the archaic Kore from the mid-5th century BC. From the National Archaeological Museum, I took inspiration from the oversized Zeus of Artemision from 450 BC; its slightly over lifesize stature gives it import while its low base makes it relatable. 

The female nude Aphrodite of Knidos–the original Greek work from 4th Century BC has been lost, though Roman copies survive–was crucial for Greek sculpture since before that art was dominated by male nudes. Studying copies of Aphrodite in Rome and Paris helped me figure out how to present a female nude in a natural stance. Portrayals of an expectant mother are few across art history–mothers are usually depicted holding their born child–but I found Byzantine icons of the Pregnant Virgin Mary which were another inspiration. 

Can you talk a little bit about the physical process of producing the sculpture?

In creating art, I combine the ancient and the state of the art. The materials in each step of the process vary, ranging from water-based clay (the kind that comes out of a river bank) to building construction materials to metals for the final product (as is common to sculpture for the last 6,000 years). Another key material for me is silicon–the kind used in modern gaming computers that power the digital sculpting software that is critical in the middle part of the process.

For Aretaieia, I sourced recycled PETG plastic from medical waste packaging, printing the body using industrial machines in-house. I finished it in gold metal coating, which references the ancient Greek practice of adorning statues of gods with gold to convey power, immortality, and divine nature.

How does it affect your creative process when it’s a piece that will be displayed in public?

It’s thrilling whenever one of my pieces finds a permanent home in a public venue. It opens the sculpture up to a wider audience that brings lots of different perspectives to it. After going through the process with The Refugee, which I unveiled in Athens to commemorate the anniversary of the burning of Smyrna, I was eager to take on the challenge of another public work.

In the case of Aretaieia, one of the doctors there, Professor Nikolaos Vlahos, was familiar with my work and thought it might be a good fit with the hospital, so I began to work with them to create a piece. The development of such a work can take a long time–two years for Aretaieia–but I wanted the doctors and leadership of the hospital to feel like the piece itself and its placement had evolved specifically with them in mind. I thought a lot about the virtues of Aretaieio Hospital, one of the leading university hospitals in Athens, and combined them with my own deeply personal connection to my own mother to create a unique work. Collaborating with the hospital to make the project a reality was a wonderful experience, and I think people will feel that when they see the finished work.

Are there factors that make the location a good fit for this particular work?

Yes, we chose a location which looks across Vasilissis Sofias Avenue at a statue of Eleftherios Venizelos, the venerated Greek statesman, by the 20th century Greek sculptor Yiannis Pappas. This inspired me to place the two works in dialogue, asking viewers to ponder their similarities and differences on many levels. As I appreciated the sprightly gait Pappas gave to the statue of Venizelos, I sought to mirror it in Aretaieia. Like him, she walks with left foot forward, upper body leaning into the future, her head held high, glancing at the statesman and perhaps “speaking” to him. 

There are differences between the two at first glance: He wears perfect formal clothing and holds a symbolic rolled parchment in his hand whereas she unabashedly presents her body, which moves in all directions, placing her hands to cradle her soon-to-be-born child. But if viewers contemplate them for a little longer, they might see that statues are really meant to be in balance: the male and the female, the father of the nation and the mother who creates its people…each force being inexorable but unable to exist without the other.