It all started from a bronze head from the Hellenistic period representing the god Hypnos, which is located in the British Museum. With this remote symbol, Euphrosyni Doxiadis aimed to give it a contemporary form through her painting, creating nine representations of Hypnos in modern natural environments, while also referencing antiquity: the use of four colors as understood then, with black, white, ochre, and deep red generating countless other colors suitable for the human body and the Mediterranean landscape.

The nine works feature Homeric gray skies, possess a strong historical context and realism under silvery dream light, and aim to distract the mind from a uniform and static surface, from an aesthetic devoid of blood. "To bring ancient statues to life, to give them blood and flesh was a challenge for me, something I yearned to do for many years."

The painter approached Vangelis Hatzigiannidis, with whom she had collaborated on illustrating his short stories "Natural Histories" (To Rodakio 2006). She asked him to translate her nine images into prose, weaving a story. As the works and the narrative progressed, a multifaceted complicity was born between the painter and the writer.

And to accompany the exhibition at the Athens Art Hall, this book was created, which, like old Japanese books, opens like an accordion from both sides to restart from the end to the beginning. We wanted this purely Greek product to be exportable with the assistance of Anne Marie Stanton-Ife, who has translated Vangelis Hatzigiannidis' two novels "The Four Walls" (To Rodakio 2000) and "The Guest" (To Rodakio 2004) for the Marion Boyars publishing house in London.