Mylona Alex

She took her first painting lessons from an English painter when she was 8-10, since her parents were aware of her artistic talent, evident from an early age. In 1942, she went on to study at Athens College with Nikos Nakis, and in 1945, already mother to a child, she was admitted to the Athens School of Fine Arts, where she studied sculpture with professor Michalis Tombros. In the following years, she came into contact with Greek and international artists, including Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas, Henry Moore, Alberto Giacometti, Ossip Zadkine and Jean Arp. In 1954, she became member of the art group “To ergastiri” [The workshop]. During the same year, she won second place at the Greek national contest for the Monument to the Greeks executed by Germans in Nikaia. She is also among the founding members of the Association of Greek Women Artists, in which she became vice chairman.

Her work has been presented in solo and major group exhibitions, including Panhellenic exhibitions, the Venice Biennale (1960), the Sao Paulo Biennale (1961) and the Montreal Biennale (1968) as well as the international exhibition of contemporary sculpture “Exposition Internationale de Sculpture Contemporaine” and the exhibition “Greek Painters and Sculptors in Paris” (Peintres et Sculpteurs Grecs de Paris), mounted in the French capital in 1961 and 1962 respectively. In 1986, a retrospective exhibition of her work was organised by the National Gallery in Athens.

Beginning with works in stone or bronze, focusing on the human figure and characterized by stylisation and accentuation of volumes, Alex Mylona progressively advanced towards abstraction. Even before 1960, she had developed her own personal vocabulary, creating metal works distinguished for their expressionistic content, extreme angular appendages, highlighting the expressive possibilities of the material, all manners of contrasts, reducing the subject to an element of secondary importance, as well as suppressing the third dimension. These features, along with the reintroduction of depth in her works, would also prevail in her later production, in which a tendency towards archaic and archetypal models, such as the double axe and the cross, is also evident, while figurative elements blend with abstract themes.