The GSA/Historical Archives – Museum of Hydra presents an exhibition by painter Katja Nagel titled ANTHEA, a series of works inspired by Greek mythology and the natural world. The artist is already familiar to the Museum’s audience, as in the summer of 2024 she presented the exhibition “Arts Aegeo” at the same venue, a series inspired by the aquatic landscape and the mythological memory of the Aegean. Her new exhibition in Hydra deepens the creative dialogue with the Greek world, shifting the focus from the archipelago’s maritime geography to the land and the blossoming of nature.

In Greek mythology, the world is strewn with traces of the divine. A tree or a fruit can become places where divine power leaves its mark. Nagel returns to this ancient language, attempting to “read” nature as an alphabet of the divine.
Her painting is built upon the purity of form and the autonomy of color. The compositions are organized into flat, almost emblematic surfaces, where the line precisely defines the shape and color serves as a vehicle for intensity. The GAIA series proposes a symbolic mapping of the earth. The animal forms are placed within flat planes of color that resemble simplified fields, where space is rendered through the coexistence of pure chromatic surfaces. Thus, the animal—bull, horse, or ram—takes on the character of an emblem, a formal core around which the composition is structured.

The new ANTHEA collection draws our gaze toward the world of blossoming. The name itself refers to the ancient Anthéa, one of the Graces of Greek mythology, a deity associated with the joy of spring and the floral wreaths of festivals. In these paintings, fruits and trees—olive, pomegranate, cypress—appear as symbols of a cosmic rebirth. Symbols of a force that permeates nature and reappears every spring, reminding us of the world’s ceaseless process of rebirth. The artist’s visual language transforms the botanical motif into a form that encapsulates the idea of vital energy, giving the ANTHEA series a character that is both poetic and symbolic.

Nagel’s works evoke a pictorial Pompeii: figures of animals and paradisiacal plants recall the ancient world, where nature and the divine coexisted in a shared language of symbols. In the artist’s work, this “Edenic painting” is transported into the light of Hydra; through the surface of the canvas, the island landscape lends a new pictorial substance to the myth.

Katja Nagel lives and works between Germany and Greece, drawing constant inspiration from Greek mythology and the Mediterranean landscape. Her painting revolves around the relationship between nature and symbol, creating a visual world where mythology is reimagined through contemporary forms.

On the opening night, Katerina Hatzinikolaou, violinist and concertmaster of the Athens State Orchestra, will perform at the exhibition venue.

More about the painter at www.katja -nagel.art
About GSA www.iamy.gr