The FIrst World War through the eyes of the eyes of female artists: Thalia Flora Karavia – Nadezda Petrovic

The Balkan Wars and World War I became the bloodiest conflicts in the region in the 20th century. At thesame time, they mobilized larger populations, including women.

Women, although against war and violence, are nevertheless mobilised, as they consider it necessary to promote national aspirations. Women, who had hitherto been on the rear of the battlefield, were mobilised both to transport munitions to the armed forces and to care for the injured.

This mobilization legalized their participation in many fields of activity that had been prohibited until then and created the appropriate conditions in which freedoms, unprecedented for the female sex,evolved. These new roles, as well as the more traditional ones, paved a new way for the women's movement atthe dawn of the new century.

Among the new roles claimed by the women of the Balkan Wars was that of painter. It was not a restricted role, but a role that emerged alongside that of the nurse. Two such women, the Greek Thalia Flora-Karavia and the Serbian Nadezda Petrovic, participated in the Balkan Wars, as nurses and painters, as aforementioned .The experiential contact with the violence of war, as it was reflected in the hospital rooms, gave their paintings a special character, that of a woman’s perspective, precisely, sensitivity, to a matter that until then had been considered a man’s business.

The goal of the present exhibition is to promote the artistic creations of these two important women, which imprint the everyday life of soldiers, far from the battlefield, as well as the beauty of the Balkan landscape, beyond and outside the warfare.

The exhibition was inaugurated on Friday, March 29, 2019, by the Ambassador of the Republic of Serbia to Greece, Mr. Dusan Spasojevic and the Commander of the Military School of Corps Officers, Major General Georgios Mantzouranis.