Inter-War Ideology in Nelly’s’s Nudes: Nationalism, Fascism and the Classical Tradition

Nelly’s, or Elli Sougioultzoglou-Seraidari, produced a series of photographs in the 1920s and 1930s, which seem to idolize ancient Greece. Her themes (naked men and women, landscapes, archaeological monuments) as well as her aesthetics are indicative of contemporary political influences on her work. The main political ideologies identified in her neoclassical photos are those of Greek nationalism, Greek fascism, and German Nazism. Hers was a national and a transnational fascist aesthetic. In all instances, though, she remained consistent in following conservative (to each place) artistic movements in the choice of her themes, her techniques, and her aesthetics. Through her work and her continuous employment in governmental posts, she became an advocate of Greek nationalism and German fascism. As a consequence of her artistic choices, she soon became one of the approved artists of Metaxas’s fascist regime and a favorite of 1930s Athenian bourgeois society that viewed itself as cosmopolitan.