On Execution, 1948

Apartis made this relief stele in response to a commission for a monument to the Boy Scouts of Smyrna, who had been tortured during the Asia Minor Disaster. But in the end the memorial was not approved by the commissioners because it depicted a naked male figure. In 1983 the relief, incorporated into the copy of the iron door of a cell, was used for the composition of a monument in honor of the patriots who were tortured during the German Occupation, in the holding cells of the Gestapo. The composition also bears the titles “The Prisoner”, “The Martyr”, “The Victim”, “On Execution” and “So the Land You Walk upon Will be Free”.

Apartis, wanting to make a work that would symbolize all the young men who sacrificed themselves for an ideal, combines elements from Maillol’s “Bicyclist”, from ancient funerary steles, as well as the inclination of the head which, in works by Michelangelo, Rodin and Bourdelle expresses inner anguish and death.