ἅλς (A), ᾰος[ᾰ], ὁ, dat. plur. ἅλασιν· Lat. SAL, piece of salt, in Herod.; generally, salt, often in the plur., in Homer. etc.; ἁλὸς μεταλλον, salt mine, in Herod., Homer etc.
ἅλς (B), ἁλός [ᾰ], ἡ sea, in Homer
ἅλσις, –εως, ἡ (ἅλλομαι), leap, bounce, in Arist.
Forty paintings created with encaustic technique by the international artist Anna Achilleos-Stäubli especially for the recreation area of the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, attempt to spell out and give meaning both symbolically and literally to the sea in its Homeric substance: ἅλς with a windy alpha of beginning, a fluid lambda of continuity, a serene sigma of saltiness. Sea, as a shell and living palimpsest with magical content. As a triumphant primordial source of life, as an eternal nurturer but also as a live crossing of cultures, a vibrant claimer of borders and a dynamic mean of communication. To understand and sing it as a deep sea and an ocean, as a magical myrrh and a pelagos, as a faraway poros and as an inexhaustible pontos, as chaos and as vibration, as dizziness and peace.
They attempt to measure it mentally, taking us on a journey through the Mediterranean of the entire Greek civilization, from the Ionian and the Aegean, the Propontis and the Black Sea, to the Myrtle and the Libyan Sea. To capture it as the primordial raw material that permeates and defines so many of the precious exhibits of the National Archaeological Museum.
In this original installation by the painter, the sea expressed as a dotted organic body, as a rainbow of innumerable shades of blue and as a mysterious shell of creatures and myths, is presented triumphantly, without the need for narrative means. Created with a fascinating spectrum of different and unexpected colors and tones that go back to ancient Greek painting, it is treated as a first-of-its-kind find and creates a mythical plain of successive psychographic instants and eternal oceanic coordinates.
Driven by her imperative need to render the majesty of colors, the rhythm of shape, the desire of touch, the ecstatic moisture, the permanence, the inexhaustible depth and breadth and the primordial secret undulation, Anna Achilleos-Stäubli has devoted herself for decades to both inherent difficulties of the technique and the exciting possibilities of encaustic art.
Within her yet unexplored seas, we discover the possibility of a new execution carried out with unerring technique and transcendent artistic quality. Thus illuminating the multiple layers of history, the expressionist emotion of the fluid and improvised pigment, the extreme materiality, the imperceptible shading and the expressive gesture of painting in its finest.
Approaching this dominant timeless Greek symbol in a non-narrative and inventive way, Anna Achilleos-Stäubli creates from the beginning an excellent sparse but densely tangible painting semiology that captivates the viewer from its first sparkle to its very depth.
Iris Kritikou
Archaeologist & Art Historian
Curator of the exhibition