Meeting Point 08: Municipal Gallery of Larissa – G. I. Katsigras Museum

Yannis Tsarouchis, Woman from Atalanti and Eros, 1957, colour lithograph, 35 × 25 cm, G. I. Katsigras Collection

The artwork “Woman from Atalanti and Eros” by Yannis Tsarouchis was created in 1957 and is a colour lithograph on paper, that is, a print made from a stone surface. It is small in scale, approximately the size of an A4 sheet of paper. The composition depicts two human figures, a female and a male, shown from the chest upwards. The female figure occupies most of the composition, while beside her, slightly lower and to the right, appears the smaller winged male figure representing Eros.

The female figure dominates the artwork. She wears traditional attire from the region of Atalanti, adorned with gold coins across the chest and a beaded necklace around her neck. Her facial features are pronounced, with dark hair, eyebrows, and eyes, while her gaze remains steady and almost expressionless. On her head she wears a headscarf in shades of burgundy and brick red. The figure is rendered with clear contours, and the absence of depth enhances the flatness of the image, lending the composition a sense of calm and stillness. Lower to the right appears Eros, a semi-nude male figure rendered on a much smaller scale than the woman. Behind his back, parts of two wings are visible, resembling butterfly wings in a light turquoise hue, while above his head another butterfly hovers, its wings in similar tones. 

Although the two figures coexist within the same pictorial space, they do not appear to interact. The distance between them and the difference in scale create a feeling of silent detachment. The colour palette is restrained and subdued, with an off-white background that reinforces the serenity and static quality of the image. In the upper right corner, the artist’s signature and the year of creation are visible.

The female figure alludes both to Greek rural women and to the myth of Atalanta, a dynamic and self-sufficient heroine. Eros functions as a symbolic presence of the erotic element, which appears to remain on the margins. The artwork reflects Tsarouchis’s effort to present elements of Greek tradition as a living cultural identity. Through this coexistence, a gentle yet charged dialogue emerges between the human and the mythical, the earthly and the immaterial, leaving open the interpretation of the relationship between desire and distance.

The creative description of the artwork “Woman from Atalanti and Eros” by Yannis Tsarouchis is the result of co-creation by the participants in Meeting Point 08: Municipal Gallery of Larissa – G. I. Katsigras Museum.

Find out more about the project: