Thalia Flora-Karavia follows the Greek army to the Balkan Wars' front

The outbreak of the Balkan Wars found the painter Thalia Flora-Karavia (1871-1960) in Munich. Still, she immediately returned to Greece to travel to the front, as a correspondent for a newspaper from Alexandria, Egypt. In November 1912, she arrived in Thessaloniki, and in the following months, she visited Macedonia and Epirus – she even entered Giannena with the Greek army in February 1913. The painter took notes of everything she witnessed and painted nonstop. As she later wrote, "I wrote down with words and images my experiences, as I passed through, hastily, carelessly, roughly". Flora-Karavia could not be in the line of fire, and her drawings (the majority of which is currently housed in the National Historical Museum) concerned everyday life in the rear. She documented on paper famous and anonymous soldiers, rest scenes, refugees, wounded, war hospitals, and nursing staff. She became the First Greek war painter.

Thalia Flora was born in Siatista, Macedonia, but grew up in Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) and studied in Munich. In 1907 she married Nikos Karavias – a journalist and editor of the newspaper "Newspaper of Alexandria" – and settled in Egypt, where she founded an Art School. From 1940 until her death, she lived in Athens.