Nikos Engonopoulos does not need the anniversary tributes to his century, nor the late manifestations of state interest to be justified. After all, he has long been established in our consciousness as one of those who embroidered the Greek identity with the sharpness of his poetic language and an imaginative artistic penetration, with his liberated psyche and the generosity of his behavior. As a rare, extremely valuable species that always surprises us refreshingly with the mixed but legitimate substance of his humanity - to remember that great national thinker and the bridge between Greek sensitivity and the spirituality of European thought.

The anxieties and sorrows, desires and expectations that emerge from his expressive criticism summarize the longevity of a hot historical experience, far surpassing any conventional classification of his work. This very transcendence, with its direct impact on the viewer's and reader's receptive ease, simultaneously interprets the surprising mythologization of Engonopoulos during the warm reception from the evaluative scales of our self-awareness. This very transcendence is also what the ambitious exhibition of the Benaki Museum aims to highlight, with its weighty publication accompanying it. However, the demands of such an ambitious but complex goal could hardly be fulfilled without the encouraging enlistment of many contributors, to whom the gratitude of the Foundation is boundless. [...]

(from the introduction by Angelos Delivorrias)