Kerkyra, The Old Fortress 1930

Curator: This is "Kerkyra, The Old Fortress," painted in 1930 by Konstantinos Parthenis. The artist captures a cityscape using oil on canvas in a style often associated with modernism. Editor: Immediately, the scene feels both solid and ephemeral. The fortress looms, but the water's reflection seems to dissolve its edges. There's a quiet tension here. Curator: Parthenis was deeply interested in blending classical Greek motifs with contemporary artistic expressions. Note how he renders the fortress with a weight that calls back to ancient strongholds. Editor: The weight is literal, too. Fortresses signify power, protection, but also exclusion. I can’t help but think of the political climate in the interwar period when this was painted, a time ripe with burgeoning nationalism and conflict. Curator: Precisely. Yet there’s also a certain luminosity. The muted colors – greys, blues, creams – almost soften the fortress’s presence, and water reflections also create almost a dreamlike vision, don't you think? Water has many layers of meanings like regeneration, and calmness but also sometimes it could mean the unknown depths... Editor: Definitely dreamlike! I’m seeing the fortress perhaps as a monument to something already passing. This vision, rendered in what seems like almost washed out oil colors, implies vulnerability in all that stone. It asks, 'What do we safeguard, and at what cost?' Curator: The use of plein-air technique underscores the ephemerality you’ve mentioned. By painting outdoors, Parthenis attempts to capture an essence or feeling through observing his subject, beyond simply depicting its outer form. Editor: Exactly, and by painting it in modern style. It moves the work from straightforward historical portraiture into something richer and layered that calls our sense of collective and fractured past. It becomes relevant again. Curator: Seeing this vista now, it makes you consider how places of imposing physical presence continue carrying stories and inspire reflection across eras. Editor: It's like Parthenis reminds us that no matter how solid something looks, the tides of history keep churning.