Kapralos Christos

With his roots in a poor farming family, he took his first painting lessons from the icon-painters in the region. In 1928 he came to Athens, originally working as a designer in the office of the architect V. Kouremenos and then at the scupture workshop of Vasos Falireas. From 1930 to 1934, with the support of the Papastratos brothers, he studied painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts. But his flair for sculpture, led him that same year to Paris. In the French capital he attended lessons at the Colarossi and Grande Chaumiere Academies, working mainly under Marcel Gimond. In 1940, with the outbreak of war, he returned to Greece and was called up. During the German occupation he went back to his village working in the tobacco fields, but without giving up his sculpture. In 1946 he returned to Athens once more where he opened a studio and dedicated himself singlemindedly to his art. In 1962 he settled on Aegina where he spent most of his time. Since 1995 his studio there has functioned as a museum.

He started to exhibit in 1946 with the presentation of his first solo exhibition at Parnassos. This was followed by solo exhibitions in Greece and abroad, as well as a retrospective at the National Gallery in 1981. He also took part in group, Panhellenics and international exhibitions, such as the Biennales of Venice in 1962 and 1972 and Sao Paolo in 1975.

Right from the start his sculpture was focussed on the human figure. Originally using clay, plaster, stone and marble he made single pieces of sculpture or series of works, rendered realistically, having as their source of inspiration ancient Greek sculpture, primarily the archaic period. At the beginning of the Sixties he turned to abstract compositions, but not completely non-figurative. Employing his own technique, he created works made of sheets of copper, in which the deliberate distortion, the fragmentary rendering and the combination of heterogeneous elements had expressionism, surrealism and futurism as their models. He was also interested in objects of everyday use and animal figures and used wood for the creation of compositions inspired by mythology, history and the Christian tradition.