The work of the painter Vasilis Semertzidis is currently housed at the Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation (36 paintings) and at the Municipality of Rhodes (103 paintings). His family, particularly his wife Ruli Semertzidi, entrusted the valuable manuscripts of the artist to art historian and now emeritus professor at the University of Crete, Nikos Hatzinikolaou—an extensive personal diary that Semertzidis meticulously kept for half a century, from 1929 to 1980.

With unparalleled dedication and care, Hatzinikolaou curated this publication, accompanying it with rich illustrative material and a comprehensive Introduction about the painter's beginnings, his first steps following in the footsteps of Parthenis, his initial explorations, his initiatory readings, and political shifts, his experiments with form — with expressionism, symbolism, portraits, and still lifes — up until the existential difficulties of an impoverished life.

The decade 1929-1939, which constitutes the first volume of the work, covers the years of the young Vasilis's apprenticeship: “[…] an apprenticeship,” says Hatzinikolaou, “... in life and love, apprenticeship at the School of Fine Arts, apprenticeship in the struggle for survival and the fight for creation. The child of refugees from the Caucasus, now a young painter with significant work behind him, moves forward without being able to imagine what awaits him in the coming decade. The greatest trials for the country and its people will succeed one another: War, Occupation, Collaboration, Resistance, the December events, Civil War. How will he react? With whom will he travel? And painting?”