10 colored drawings for the poems of George Seferis 1965

Yiannis Moralis made this drawing in 1965 as an illustration of a poem. I can imagine him at his desk with all these poems. It is all there in front of him, floating in his mind. There’s something about that limited palette of black, white, and gray that feels ancient, like frescoes uncovered in a ruin. The color creates a mood, almost like a memory. I wonder what kind of exchange happened between Moralis and Seferis. The composition is so interesting—it feels both architectural and fragmented. It's like looking through a broken window, or maybe a series of windows, each offering a glimpse into a different world. But the image also has a very modern feeling to me, echoing artists like Picasso or Gris, who were all about breaking down forms and reassembling them in unexpected ways. Moralis seemed to be listening to the rhythms of Seferis’s words, and responding to them with his own visual language. It makes me want to read the poem it accompanies.