Former Dali model and sculptor, the 90-year-old German woman was taken on a deckchair to a festival in Crete

The elderly woman is the German sculptor Karina Reck, known for years in Crete as the “Karina of Anogia”. The 90-year-old had expressed her desire to be at the village fair in Margarites Mylopotamos. The younger residents did not spoil her fun: they carried her on a deckchair to the party, where she spent the evening with the other residents, applauded the dancers and participated in her own way in the celebration.

“So this beautiful soul danced last night, applauded and rejoiced in everyone’s joy,” said Katerina Manetaki, a resident of Rethymno, in her post, while also revealing who the woman behind the images that attracted attention is.

From Dali and Pasolini to Crete
Karina Reck’s life resembles a movie script. According to what Katerina Manetaki says about the German, in her youth she was a model for Salvador Dali, while she also participated in a film by the great Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini. At the same time, she was an excellent flamenco dancer, before her life took a completely different turn and brought her to Crete.

Her relationship with the island began, according to the same story, from a song by Psarantonis, which she heard while in Berlin. The music made her search for the Cretan artist’s place of origin and thus arrived in Anogia. There she got to know not only the place and its people, but also the heavy history of the village during the German Occupation.

Her acquaintance with the history of Anogia led her to the decision to create a special work, as a monument of Germany’s apology to Anogia. As a landscape sculptor, she created the “Peace Rebel” on the Nida plateau, a huge work for which she collaborated for two years with Anogia workers.

The monument consists of approximately 5,000 stones from the area and, due to its size and shape, can only be seen in its entirety from a great height, from an aerial view or via satellite imagery.
The “Peace Rebel” the stone Angel that can only be seen from above

Rek has also written a book dedicated to the memory of the resistance struggle of the Cretan people against the German Occupation forces in the period 1941-1945.

In recent years, the 90-year-old has lived permanently in Margarites, Mylopotamos. She wanted to celebrate this year’s Dekapentagousto there as well. And when age and difficulties in transportation could have kept her away from the festival, the people of the village found the solution: a deckchair became the means to reach the feast.