Mother through art: mother is not only the one who gives birth, but also the one who “embraces” human pain

About the world is celebrated today the ‘Mother’s Day’ As a minimum of honor and respect, to the eternal universal symbol of selfless love and devotion. Not only poetry and music, but also the painter and chisel offered masterpieces of art to praise it.

Mother is not only the one who gives birth, but also the one who with her big heart embraces human pain. A source of inexhaustible inspiration, which without its sweet and heroic form of surely our world would be very poor.

This little tribute depicts the Greek mother in modern Greek art and at the same time highlights motherhood, not only as a natural event, but also as a concept that guarantees the continuation of life and creates inexhaustible bonds of the next generation. Greek artists present the aspects of maternity through the artistic tendencies of the 19th and 20th centuries.

During these centuries, motherhood has a significant presence in painting, engraving and sculpture. Having a central position in Greek society, the mother has developed a variety of skills and activities and has become a model of dedication and self -denial. The relevant works at the same time express the importance and prestige of the maternal form in the consciousness of the modern Greeks.

A topic with social, ideological and psychological components, motherhood in its illustrations over time reflects and reveals temperaments, psyches, female identity, individual as well as culturally defined behaviors and the consciousness of the parent relationship.

The mother was worshiped as a symbol of fertility already by the early human societies and has been a favorite subject of all forms of art, from antiquity to the present day. Above all, the mother -infant’s motif has stood out as the most durable in time and the most emotionally charged.

• Issue from the Hellenic Parliament Foundation, entitled “Tribute to Greek Mother: Maternity in Modern Greek Art”