He studied engraving and painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts (1952-1958) under Yannis Kefallinos and Yannis Moralis respectively. On a scholarship from the State Scholarship Service he continued his studies at the Paris School of Fine Arts (1962-1966), doing woodcuts under R. Cami and lithography under E. Clairin. At the same time he specialized in the art of the book at the Estienne School.
He started to exhibit in 1960, participating in a Panhellenio, and his first solo exhibition of engraving was also held then, at the Zygos gallery. These were followed by solo, group and international exhibitions of painting and engraving, such as the Alexandria Biennales of 1961 and 1965 and the Biennales of Sao Paolo in 1965, and Paris in 1965, 1967 and 1969 as well as many others. He has also won many Greek and international awards for his engraving.
In the framework of his broader artistic activity he has been involved with book, calendar and Greek and Cypriot stamp design, as well as book illustration. He served as director of the Doxiadis School (1971-1976), advisor to Aspioti-Elka (1986-1988) and advisor to the Society of Greek Typographic Principles while since 1978 he has been a professor at the Higher School of Graphic Arts at the Technological Educational Foundations in Athens. For many years he was also responsible for the artistic supervision of the editions of the National Bank. He designed two large tapestries for the Hellenic Canadian Trust Bank in Montreal (1972) and the Atlantic Bank in New York (1974) as well as two large works in marble and bronze for the branch of the National Bank of Greece in Frankfurt, Germany.
His work, both painting and engraving, includes landscapes and scenes from everyday life, which are rendered realistically with a particular emphasis on the role of light and color. At the same time, he has made compositions which are faithful to the tenets of abstract expressionism and geometric abstraction, and he has experimented with materials in a variety of combinations.
After finishing school, he enrolled in the Athens School of Fine Arts, where he studied with Michalis Tombros; during the same period, he frequented Thanassis Apartis’s studio. Graduating in 1950, he immediately left for Paris. He attended courses in Marcel Gimond’s studio for a while but soon moved to Chevreuse, where he became first a student and then for several years a professor at the Faculty of Ceramics.
His first solo exhibitions were held in 1964 in Nantes, Paris and Athens. Then followed personal shows in Greece and other countries as well as participations in major group and international exhibitions, such as the Paris Salon du mai, the 1965 Sao Paulo Biennale, Panhellenic exhibitions as well as the National Gallery exhibition “Metamorphoses of the Modern” in 1992.
An artist who never ceased to seek and experiment, in the late 1970’s Philolaos developed his own original technique and produced a great number of works made in cement, stainless steel and washed concrete. Particularly interested in the cultural mission of sculpture and its placement in an architectural setting, he extensively collaborated with architects. The fruit of these collaborations were monumental sculptural constructions for public sites. At the same time, he was also interested in small-scale sculpture, creating small objects, such as carved wood landscapes, fruit bowls and decorative objects of a poetic and intensely surrealist nature, as well as jewelery.
Descendant of a great family of artists, he enrolled in the School of Arts in 1846 and studied sculpture with Christian Siegel. While still student, he worked with his brother Lazaros, producing works in various parts of Greece. In 1856, the two brothers participated in the Kontostavleios competition and shared the first award of one thousand drachmas for their work Shepherd carrying a kid. In 1858, they established their own studio, which became a true school for many of the sculptors of the younger generation.
Georgios Fytalis graduated from the School of Arts in 1857. During the same year, he participated once again in the Kontostavleios competition, earning a prize of one thousand drachmas. The following year, he was appointed professor at the School of Arts, a post he served until 1868, when he was replaced by Leonidas Drossis. In 1860, he was nominated member of the Greek Archaeological Society. He had a close association with Lyssandros Kaftantzoglou; alone, or in cooperation with his brother Lazaros, he produced many of Kaftantzoglou’s sculptural designs.
The joint exhibition activity of the Fytalis brothers includes contributions to group exhibitions in Greece and international ones. Their works were shown at the London International Exhibitions in 1851 and 1862, in the 1855 and 1857 Paris International Exhibition (Lazaros’s only) as well as in the Olympia exhibitions in Athens in 1859, when they received a prize, and 1870, when they received an honorary distinction for their work as marble importers.
With their studies at the School of Arts and their familiarity with European sculpture, the Fytalis brothers had at their disposal a wide array of models from which to draw from and create compositions on mythological, allegorical and genre themes, funerary monuments, statues and busts. The works emanating from their studio are characterized by their commitment to the neoclassicist ideals, their idealistic and idealized expression as well as their adoption of realistic elements. The latter are more frequent in Georgios Fytalis’s compositions, also distinguished for their plasticity, the equilibrium of forms and the overall absence of any cold neoclassicism; in Lazaros’s work, however, idealistic features and a precise draftsmanship prevail.
Descendant of a great family of artists, he enrolled in the School of Arts in 1846 and studied sculpture with Christian Siegel. While still student, he worked with his brother Georgios, producing works in various parts of Greece. In 1856, the two brothers participated in the Kontostavleios competition and shared the first award of one thousand drachmas for their work Shepherd carrying a kid. In 1858, they established their own studio, which became a true school for many of the sculptors of the younger generation.
Lazaros Fytalis graduated from the School of Arts in 1851 and a few years later went to Paris, where he worked with the French sculptor Charles Cordier. In 1857, he participated in the international competition for the Wellington memorial to be built in London. In 1879, he participated in the excavation that brought to light the Lion monument at Chaironeia and subsequently submitted a plan for its restoration, which was not adopted. During 1902-1904, though, on Lazaros Sochos’s initiative, Lazaros Fytalis did participate in the restoration of the monument; in 1884, he was assigned with the conservation of the Kerameikos Bull.
The joint exhibition activity of the Fytalis brothers includes contributions to group exhibitions in Greece and international ones. Their works were shown at the London International Exhibitions in 1851 and 1862, in the 1855 and 1857 Paris International Exhibition (Lazaros’s only) as well as in the Olympia exhibitions in Athens in 1859, when they received a prize, and 1870, when they received an honorary distinction for their work as marble importers.
With their studies at the School of Arts and their familiarity with European sculpture, the Fytalis brothers had at their disposal a wide array of models from which to draw from and create compositions on mythological, allegorical and genre themes, funerary monuments, statues and busts. The works emanating from their studio are characterized by their commitment to the neoclassicist ideals, their idealistic and idealized expression as well as their adoption of realistic elements. The latter are more frequent in Georgios Fytalis’s compositions, also distinguished for their plasticity, the equilibrium of forms and the overall absence of any cold neoclassicism; in Lazaros’s work, however, idealistic features and a precise draftsmanship prevail.
He took his first lessons from the icon painter G. Kazakos, and Panos Sarafianos. He then studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts, initially in the Thanasis Apartis sculpture workshop and then under Yannis Moralis. With a grant from the State Scholarship Service he also studied set design and decoration. During the period from 1967 to 1973 he travelled to various European countries visiting the museums and acquainting himself with the modern art scene.
His exhibitions include both solo and group shows of painting and engraving, in Greece and abroad.
In the context of his broader artistic activity, he has also been involved with the editing of various publications. Moreover, he was a founding member of the Engraving Group.
Involved both with painting and engraving, he has made the human figure his center of interest, the female figure in particular, which monumental and corpulent, whether whole or fragmentary, dominate his compositions which combine echoes of cubism, expressionism and surrealism and are rendered in a special style all his own.
The son of a furniture maker, Emile-Antoine Bourdelle quit school in 1874 to work with his father. From 1876 to 1884 he studied at the School of Fine Arts in Toulouse on scholarship from the Municipality of Montauban. In 1884 he went to Paris, where he was accepted at the School of Fine Arts. For a period time he attended classes at the atelier of Alexandre Falguiere, a particularly successful and productive realist neo-Baroque sculptor with a substantial number of official commissions for public monuments. However, this academic training was incompatible with the concerns of the young Bourdelle, who soon left the School. He subsequently rented a studio in Montparnasse and began working on his own. Jules Dalou, sculptor of the impressive group composition “Triumph of the Republic” (Place de la Nation in Paris) lived nearby. Bourdelle admired him and frequently sought his advice.
In 1897 Bourdelle received his first official commission to create a monument to the fallen in Montauban. The monument committee approved the model on the intervention of Rodin, who fervently supported its acceptance. Bourdelle had met Rodin in 1893 and worked with him until 1908, carving the latter’s models into marble. His first creative period is clearly influenced by Rodin’s work, who introduced him to the forms of ancient sculpture. But Bourdelle’s restless spirit and his need for a more personal expression gradually led him away from the influence of his former teachers and as well as Rodin. This shift in orientation manifested itself in the head of the “Warrior Apollo” (1900) and in the torso of the “Pallas Athena” (1898-1905, which he rendered frontally, relying on schematization, clear planes, and the austere expression characteristic of Archaic-period sculpture. Living in a transitional era that was filled with unease, the questioning of traditional means of expression, and the exploration of new directions, Bourdelle ended up focusing on the various periods of Greek antiquity to provide him with ongoing inspiration. His association with the symbolist poets and his friendship with the Greek-French poet Jean Moreas also played a part in this choice. The influences of Rodin’s sculpture and ancient art, which he combined in the Montauban monument in a personal expressionistic manner, and the eclectic adaptation of the ideals of ancient art, ended up as a synthetic style in which confusion is subjugated by order. This style, which Bourdelle called “organized turmoil,” became the characteristic feature of his art.
Another area to which Bourdelle turned his attention was monumental works, both free-standing and combined with architecture. With the large commissions he received, he contributed significantly to the revival of monumental sculpture, among the most eminent of these being the relief decoration on facade of the Theatre des Champs-Elysees. The exterior decoration in particular, on the theme of Apollo and the Muses modeled after the sculpture of ancient Olympia and based on the teachings of Archaic art and the austere order, is the strongest manifestation of the artist’s convictions that sculpture is an inextricable element of architecture.
Besides mythological themes and monumental group compositions, Bourdelle carved a sizeable number of portrait busts of his predecessors and contemporaries. Although these works show a stylistic polymorphism, they clearly reference ancient models. His restless spirit also expressed itself in a host of Hellenistic-influenced figurines, which he created independently of his commissions, as well as in his thousands of drawings, the majority inspired by Greek mythology. Distinguished among these are the drawings for the illustration of the “Hundred Greek Epigrams” from the “Palatine Anthology”, which was never published, and fifteen terracotta reliefs that were engraved by J.L. Perrichon to illustrate Georges Clemenceau’s “Demosthenes” in 1929.
Bourdelle’s philhellenism also marked his personal life. In 1911 in a second marriage he wed his Greek pupil Cleopatra Sevastou. Although he never managed to visit Greece, he expressed his philhellenic sentiments in a variety of ways. He became personally acquainted with the prominent Greek statesman Eleftherios Venizelos, and was a major actor in the aid campaigns in the Balkan Wars. He also launched an appeal for the return of the ancient treasures.
In addition, Bourdelle became a famous teacher, turning his studio into the Academie de la Grande-Chaumiere in 1909 and maintaining it until his death. Bella Raftopoulou, Kostis Papachristopoulos, Georgios Kastriotis, and primarily Thanasis Apartis were among his Greek students. These artists brought Bourdelle’s teachings back to Greece and played a role in the return to the ideals of ancient art.
His artistic activity also included participation in important exhibitions. Beginning in 1884 he took part in the Salon des Artistes Francais, and from 1891 in the Salon de la Societe Nationale des Beaux Arts, where he achieved his first triumph in 1910 with “Hercules Archer”. In 1914 he represented France in the Venice Biennale; in 1923 he helped found the Salon des Tuileries; and in 1925 he took part in the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts in Paris and exhibited in the United States and Japan. Retrospectives of his work were organized in 1928 at the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels, and two years after his death, in 1931, at the Orangerie in Paris. His honorary titles include the award of knighthood in 1909 and admission into the Royal Order of the Legion of Honor in 1919. In 1948 his studio in Montparnasse was converted into a museum.
She studied in Athens, at the School of Fine Arts (1945-1950) in Michalis Tombros’s workshop, and in Paris, at the School of Decorative Arts and the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere with Ossip Zadkine (1955-1957). In 1954, she settled in Paris. In 1972, she received the Morgan’s Paint Premio award in Ravenna and in 1992 was conferred the title of “Knight of Arts and Letters” by the French government.
She presented her work in solo exhibitions in Greece and other countries; in 1999, a retrospective presentation of her work was held at the Couvent des Cordeliers in Paris. She also participated in major group events in France and other countries, including the Salon de la Jeune Sculpture and the Salon du mai, exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris and Panhellenic exhibitions.
Starting with the human figure, Gabriella Simossi created surrealistic works of an abstract approach with symbolic and poetic qualities. Her mutilated, fragmentary sculptures evoke ancient Greek sculpture; the use of cloth covering her heads or ropes around her figures creates a feeling of entrapment. Besides human figures, she also produced animal figures, mainly elephants and horses, and hybrid forms of the animal world. She worked in clay and bronze but above all in plaster, whose whiteness contributes to an effect of frigidity, silence and alienation.
He studied sculpture at the Athens School of Fine Arts (1950-1956) with professor Michalis Tombros and continued in Paris, at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, with sculptors Henri-Geprges Adam, Marcel Gimond and Hubert Yencesse, and at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere with Ossip Zadkine (1957-1960). He associated with Christian and Yvonne Zervos as well as the collector Baroness Alix de Rothschild, who in 1962 granted him a workshop at Levallois-Perret.
His first solo exhibition took place in 1961 at Yvonne Zervos’s gallery “Cahiers d’Art,” followed by many solo shows during his lifetime and posthumously. He also participated in major group exhibitions, including Panhellenic exhibitions, Paris Salons, the Antwerp Biennale of Sculpture (1961) and the Sao Paulo Biennale of the same year, the Paris Biennale Internationale des Jeunes Artistes in 1961 and 1963, in which he won first place in sculpture as well as receiving the young artists award, “Seven Trends in Contemporary Sculpture” (Sept Tendances de la Sculpture Contemporaine) in the gallery “Cahiers d’Art”, Paris (1963) and the international modern sculpture exhibition “Exposition Internationale de Sculpture Contemporaine” at the Rodin Museum (1966). His work has also been posthumously presented in major group exhibitions.
After a short period in the service of a figurative approach, during which he was interested in psychological profiling as well as an abstract treatment of the human figure, in 1959 Yerassimos Sklavos adopted abstraction. Mainly working on hard materials – granite, quartzite, marble, porphyry – and less often in iron or wood, which he carved directly – he created works in the round, in the context mainly of geometric and in certain cases organic abstraction. In 1960, he invented “Telesculpture”, a patented technique that enabled him to carve his materials more easily, using an oxyacetylene flame. The light plays a fundamental role in the effectiveness of his work, as it reveals recesses and apertures, and highlights the volumes, surfaces, the nature and colour of his material. Besides sculpture, he also became involved with drawing and painting, creating works which echo the style of his sculpture and range from figuration to abstraction.
He first studied at the drawing school of a Frenchman called Guillement in Constantinople. Then, with the help of the Zarifis family, he studied at the Athens School of Arts, sculpture with Leonidas Drossis and painting with Nikiforos Lytras. In 1881, with the financial support of Therese Zarifis, he went to Paris, where he enrolled in the Ecole des Beaux Arts and worked with the sculptor Marius Jean Antonin Mercie. In 1897, he fought in the Greek-Turkish War in a volunteer corps. In 1901, he returned to Greece in order to erect the statue of Theodoros Kolokotronis in Nafplio, the model for which he had prepared at Mercie’s workshop, in 1891-1895. The work was shown in the 1900 Paris International Exhibition, where it won the gold medal; it was also awarded by the Academy of Rome. In 1904, a second copy was set up in Athens. In 1908, Sochos was appointed professor of sculpture at the School of Arts. He collaborated with the Archaeological Agency and participated in the restoration of the Lion monument at Chaeronea and the reconstruction of the Olympia sculptures. He was founding member of the Society of Greek Artists and member of several art committees.
His work was presented at the 1888 Olympia exhibition in Athens, the 1900 Paris International Exhibition, the exhibitions of the Society of Greek Artists (1907-1910) and the Rome International Exhibition (1911).
Lazaros Sochos lived during a period of transition for Modern Greek sculpture, when neoclassicist ideals coexisted with a shift towards realism and the plastic ideas mainly emerging in Paris and Rodin’s work. His style was shaped by influences received during his apprenticeship with Drossis and his sojourn in the French capital, where he was mainly associated with sculptors representing academic sculpture, and thus never shedding his neoclassicist background. Believing that sculpture is an art of educational and moral purport and that Modern Greece could be revitalised through its classical past, he operated in the context of neoclassicism and idealism. In his works – mainly busts, monuments, reliefs and medals – a heroified figure prevails, reflecting his idealistic views, which informed both his creative career and his life.
Born into a large family, he experienced a rough childhood and adolescence, marked by hunger and imprisonment during the German Occupation.
His long artistic career began in 1946, when he made his first sculptures in plaster. Cycladic and archaic statuary as well as his encounter with Alberto Giacometti’s sculpture inspired him to create a series of wire, cloth and plaster figures.
In 1954, he settled in Paris. During the same year, he began the “Signals” series – kinetic sculptures producing musical sounds as they chime in the wind. In 1959, he showed at Iris Clert Gallery his first “Tele-Magnetic Sculptures”, making use of electromagnetic fields and thus offering in tangible form the invisible energy ever-present in the universe. The light and motion in every manifestation – mechanical, electromechanical, thermal, magnetic, hydrodynamic – have also been at the core of his work. Coming soon after, “Tele-Lights” were based on electromagnetic principles. In fact, during a performance in Iris Clert Gallery in 1960, thanks to a magnetic device made by the artist, the poet Sinclair Beiles was suspended several feet above ground, reciting the “Magnetic Manifesto”. During the same year began Takis’s long partnership with Alexander Iolas, with the artist’s first solo exhibition in New York held at the latter’s gallery.
During his stay in Paris, he met and hung out with the American writers of the Beat Generation; in New York, he met Marcel Duchamp. His autobiography (“Estafilades”) was published in 1961.
In 1968-1969, on MIT fellowship, he created his first “Hydro-magnetic Sculptures”. His “Musical Sculptures” had already appeared in 1965, in which musical sound is produced by random magnet movement. His explorations along these lines continued with the production of musical rooms as well as music and choreography happenings, culminating in the adaptation in 1992 of the aqueduct at the city of Beauvais into a huge musical sculpture. In 1974, he began producing casts of male and female bodies – the first in a series of erotic sculptures.
In his long creative activity, Takis has had major solo exhibitions, including retrospectives at the Centre National d’Art Contemporain (1972) and the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume (1993); the latter was also held at the “Factory” building of the Athens School of Fine Arts (1994). In 1999, he first presented his Photovoltaic Sculptures” in “Takis Millennium”. He has also participated in major group events, including the “Documenta” in Kassel (1977) and “The Century of Kafka” at the Centre Georges Pompidou (1984); he also represented Greece at the Venice Biennale in 1995. In 1985, he received the first prize at the Paris Biennale and in 1988 the French Grand Prix National de Sculpture.
The theatre and the cinema also attracted his interest as an artist. Thus, in 1973, he designed the set for the ballet “Eleusis” at the Netherlands National Festival and in 1983 the set for “Electra” by Sophocles at the ancient theatre of Epidaurus. He also collaborated with director Costa Gavras in the soundtrack of the film “Section Speciale”.
Takis’s works are to be found in most contemporary art museums and private collections around the world. In 1987, the French government commissioned a series of Signals, which were installed at La Defense, Paris; in 1988, he produced a “Signal” for the Olympic Sculpture Park in Seoul; in 1990, “Light Signals” were installed at the Grande Arche at La Defense; in 1993, he designed a metro station in Toulouse. In the early 1990’s, Takis settled in Greece and in 1993 established the Centre for the Arts and Sciences at Gerovouno, Attica. In 2000, his “Homage to Apollo” was installed in Delphi – an enormous kinetic sculpture operating on photovoltaic energy and his largest public site sculpture in Greece.
An unswervingly self-taught artist, Takis is a rare inventor and among the artists who regenerated sculpture. Rejecting the art of realistic figuration as well as traditional techniques, he has supported his artistic expression through constant research, study and experimentation in the functional use of natural laws, combining science and art in his strife to initiate the viewer into the essence of the universe.
Having a family pedigree in sculpture, he received his first lessons from his father and his uncle, Lazaros Sochos, and went on to study at the School of Arts with Georgios Vroutos. In 1919, he went to Paris on Greek government scholarship, studying at the Academy of Fine Arts and also attending interior design courses. In 1922, he returned to Athens and in 1926 was elected Professor at the School of Architecture, NTUA.
His exhibition history included contributions to major group events in Greece and internationally, including exhibitions with artists’ groups “Omada Techni” and “Stathmi”, of which he was member, Panhellenic exhibitions, Paris Salons, as well as the Biennale of Venice (1934 and 1958) and the Sao Paulo Biennial (1955).
Early on, Antonios Sochos broke free of the dictates of neoclassicism and developed a personal plastic language, based on archaic Greek sculpture as well as the austere style, folk wood-carving, and influenced by the avant-garde trends which he discovered during his stay in Paris. Always focusing on the human figure, his works are inspired by mythology, Greek legends and folklore, made in stone and later wood, and exploring the possibilities offered by the textures of his materials. His works are characterized by abstract tendencies and an inclination for stylisation, balance, symmetry, frontality and immobility, reflecting the artist’s individual perception as well as his diverse influences.
