The Stone of Patience, 1970

Dionyssis Gerolymatos is one of the few sculptors still working in the traditional sense, that is, he works with hard materials – stone, marble, cement. His thematic field includes works taken on commission as well as compositions of free inspiration, small or large. Since his student years, he has made use of extreme schematization, which, in his later works, is sometimes transformed into abstraction. Employing an expressionistic or surrealistic style, he gives form to thoughts, feelings, and impressions, while frequently poetry is also a motivation behind compositions through which he illustrates verses.

The “Stone of Patience” is a characteristic example, where a line from George Seferis is taken as the title of a work, while other of the poet’s verses are engraved on the side. Using stone, a hard material, Gerolymatos combines the external volume, left deliberately rough, with a piece ground smooth which then takes on the schematic form of a bird with open wings – symbol of freedom and hope – and thus creates his own image, an optimistic one, for the poetic words.