Meeting Point 09: Alekos Fassianos Museum

Alekos Fassianos, Hermes on his Bicycle, c. 2000, acrylic on paper mounted on canvas, 76 × 56 cm, Alekos Fassianos Museum Collection

“Hermes on His Bicycle” by Alekos Fassianos is a painting executed in acrylics on paper mounted on canvas. It is approximately the size of an adult human torso and is framed by a simple gold frame. The central subject of the artwork is the figure of the god Hermes, rendered in a contemporary and playful manner, astride a bicycle.

At the centre of the composition stands a male figure with a robust body and strong, simplified features. The head is shown in profile, with long hair flowing to the right and a gaze that calmly looks ahead. The figure is painted almost entirely in an intense blue hue, encompassing the skin as well as the suit and shoes he wears. Hermes stands upright with the bicycle positioned between his legs. One leg is placed forward and bent, as if taking a step, while the other remains firm and partially concealed behind the bicycle, combining movement and stillness. Golden wings are visible on his head, while in his right hand he holds a caduceus, the god’s emblem, with two snakes coiled around a staff. From the same wrist hangs a long scarf that billows in the air. With his other hand, he rests on the bicycle’s handlebars while holding ears of wheat, a recurring motif in Fassianos’s painting that alludes to fertility and life. The bicycle is rendered in gold, as is the tie Hermes wears around his neck.

The scene unfolds on a balcony with a blue-and-white checkerboard floor, while behind the bicycle rise blue metal railings arranged in a lattice pattern. In the background, the urban landscape of Athens of the past is suggested through tiled-roof houses, a church dome, and fields of wheat. On the postcard, the dome and tiled roof of the church appear to the left, above the balcony. In the sky, to the left of Hermes’s head, a pink cloud emerges, while in the upper left corner two blue doves fly, holding ears of wheat in their beaks.

All elements are rendered in a flat manner, without shading, and appear to coexist as if on the stage of a shadow theatre. Fassianos’s Hermes is not presented as a distant mythological figure, but as a contemporary messenger moving between past and present. The artwork conveys a sense of freedom, playfulness, and optimism, as if the cyclist were carrying good news, linking myth with everyday life and with memories of childhood.

The creative description of the artwork “Hermes on His Bicycle” by Alekos Fassianos is the result of co-creation by the participants in Meeting Point 09: Alekos Fassianos Museum.

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