Vally Nomidou studied painting. Her practice, however, is a combination of painting, sculpture, and environment in three-dimensional compositions crafted from all manner of material: wood, paper, plaster, paint mediums, cardboard, newspapers, and fabric. Human figures drawn from everyday life are a characteristic part of her enterprise. These figures define the space and on their own create a specific environment with minimal auxiliary attributes.
The little girl in “Bien venue” is one of Nomidou’s familiar, quotidian figures that she exhibited in Medusa Gallery in 2003. Melancholic and isolated in an invisible environment that is new and obviously unknown, the girl balances on a wooden board, the sole feature that denotes the space.
Michael Michaeledes initially worked within representational painting. Gradually his manner became more abstract, indeed becoming completely abstract by 1959. Always aspiring to capture the essence of light and to exploit the possibilities it offered for the highlighting of his compositions, he limited his use of color and along with his painting began to create reliefs and structures to be viewed from all sides, initially white and then in one or even more colors, which were composed into simple geometric shapes. In these constructions he makes use of the frame and canvas, but reverses their traditional use, as the frame functions as the interior support to which is adapted and stretched the fabric. The geometric compositions that arise from this process, repeating a shape in the same size or a gradually increasing one, are minimalist renderings of natural forms, familiar human structures or ancient architectural elements. At the same time, with the placement of the frame in the interior and the manner by which the material is stretched, even with the distance that one piece of material is placed from another, such as in “Leaning”, he manages to exploit the possibilities of light which thereby creates a host of chiaroscuros, projecting the volumes to the utmost and stressing the relief texture of the surfaces.
Theodoros very soon abandoned the representational efforts of his student years to impose his personal independent spirit on his work. He has always sought a way for sculpture to establish a close relationship with the public by creating sculptures for public spaces.
His works of the 1960s were sculptural compositions mostly in bronze or steel. He experimented with the harmony and equilibrium of forms on the ground and in the air with Surrealistic or Dadaistic prototypes as his points of departure. In this vein, in 1993, Theodoros created the construction “Twelve Ray-Spoked Wheel on Cables Counterbalanced by a Sphere”. Impressive and imposing, this construction is the only version realized in a scale appropriate for a public space. At the same time, it is a proposal for a sculpture that functions in an urban setting in the post-industrial age.
The head of the “Warrior Apollo” was a milestone in Antoine Bourdelle’s sculpture. It is the piece that marked his departure from the influence of Rodin and inaugurated his new style. Bourdelle’s personal style was formed along the guidelines of Archaic art and the austere order.
The Apollo of this composition was modeled after an Italian youth with a fiery, gaunt face, and evokes the figure of the ancient god who towers above the Battle of the Centaurs on the western pediment of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia. With this figure’s tectonic structure, sharp planes, austere expression, and powerful inner force, Bourdelle presages Cubism even as he remains faithful to Greco-Roman tradition.
The “Discus-Thrower” is one of Dimitriadis’ mature works, one of the most characteristic of the way in which he rendered the nude male body. Made in 1924 and exhibited in Paris in the framework of the Olympic Games held there, it won the sculpture prize. The following year the entrepreneur, Euripides Kehayias, a Greek from America, bought it and gave it to the Municipality of New York City, which placed it in Central Park. Another copy was placed in the Dijon stadium in France and a third in Athens, in 1927. The copy exhibited at the National Glyptotheque was cast in 1989 from the plaster model which belongs to the National Gallery.
The dexterity of the artist in the moulding of the nude body, already evident in his earlier works, has now reached its acme. The athlete is depicted at precisely the moment before the toss, in a carefully calculated stance, while his swollen veins and his nerves, that are outlined, reveal his total concentration just before the final endeavor and place an emphasis on the momentary. The work spreads out and dynamically occupies space, while the variety of opposition displayed by the limbs, makes it possible for the composition to be viewed from all sides.
Christos Kapralos shaped his personal style by assimilating the teachings of ancient Greek and folk art together with European avant-garde tendencies.
His first sculptures were simplified realistic figures in terracotta and plaster, inspired by his immediate environment. He began using bronze in 1957. The human body became transformed into Victories and mythological figures, ancient hoplite soldiers, couples, and mothers with children. At the same time, Kapralos’ compositions became highly abstracted and often fragmented. The fragmented rendition and the intentional, exaggerated distortion gave his work its dramatic character, or emphasized that quality. In some cases this dramatic quality is immediately recognizable, whereas elsewhere it manifests itself indirectly, provoking a variety of associations in pieces that are simply titled “Composition”.
“Vietnam” is characteristic from this standpoint. It is yet anoth Composition, whose content is eloquently declared in the inscriptions engraved on the piece itself: “VIETNAM” and “DICTATORSHIP SHAME”. Kapralos thus expressed his protest against a catastrophic war and a dreadful period in recent Greek history that coincided with it chronologically. The two converging, mutilated figures support one another and, despite their tragic deformities, remain upright like symbols of hope and victory.
