Nikiforos Vrettakos

What I can see

The children of the writer and poet Nikiforos Vrettakos commissioned the sculptor Nikos Perantinos to create this bust, which was placed near the house where the poet lived from 1946 to 1962. The bust is bronze and Vrettakos is depicted as a thinker. He is serious but also approachable. The sculptor was deeply influenced by ancient Greek sculpture and was inspired by Greek and European classicism. Thus, Vrettakos is represented as a Doric and classical figure.

What I can't see

Nikiforos Vrettakos (1912-1991) wrote his first poem “Hymn to the Democracy” when he was still a student. At the same age, he gave two lectures at the Gytheio Commercial Club. He was unable to complete his studies in Athens due to lack of financial resources and he worked hard for many years at various jobs in his homeland Laconia and in Athens. His first poetic collection was published in 1933 and the next two were deemed as “subversive” by the Metaxas dictatorship, which burned them. After World War II, he received the National Resistance Award for his poems, but a year later, he was fired from the Ministry of Labour for political reasons and expelled from the Greek Communist Party because of one of his books. At the same time, he retired from the management and editor-in-chief of the Elefthera Grammata magazine. He studied Kazantzakis in depth and after his works were banned by the dictatorship of the colonels (1967- 1974), he exiled himself to Italy, when his work began to be recognized in Greece and abroad and translated into many languages. He was nominated 4 times for the Nobel Prize in Literature, he received international awards (Knoken, ASLA, Vaptsarov and many more) and after the restoration of democracy in Greece, he received the Excellence in Letters of the Academy of Athens (1985), where he was elected a member soon after. Shortly before his death, he was awarded with an honorary doctorate by the University of Athens.

Info

• Address: 106 Karaiskou St.

Bibliography