Chryssa

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Not to be confused with Chrysa.

Chryssa[1]
Born
Chryssa Vardea-Mavromichali

(1933-12-31)December 31, 1933[2]
Athens, Greece
DiedDecember 23, 2013(2013-12-23) (aged 79)[2]
Athens, Greece
NationalityGreek American
Known forLuminist sculpture
Spouse
​
(m. 1955⁠–⁠1958)​

Chryssa Vardea-Mavromichali (

mononym Chryssa professionally. She worked from the mid-1950s in New York City studios and worked since 1992 in the studio she established in Neos Kosmos, Athens
, Greece.

Biography

Chryssa was born in Athens[7] into the famous Mavromichalis family from the Mani Peninsula.[8][9][10] Her family, while not rich, was educated and cultured; one of her sisters, who studied medicine, was a friend of the poet and novelist Nikos Kazantzakis.[8][10] Shortly before her birth, Chryssa's father passed away, she was raised by her mother and two older sisters.[11][12]

Chryssa grew up in Nazi-occupied Greece, which she later cites as formative to her art practice. The Greek resistance would write messages on the walls at night, which served as both a critical means for communication to citizens and an early lesson on the power of letters and symbols.[13][14] As a child, she was imprisoned on three separate occasions during the German and Italian occupation.[15]

Chryssa began painting during her teenage years and also studied to be a social worker.[8][10][16] In 1953, on the advice of a Greek art critic, her family sent her to Paris to study at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière where André Breton, Edgard Varèse, and Max Ernst were among her associates and Alberto Giacometti was a visiting professor.[8][10][17][18][19]

In 1954, at age twenty-one, Chryssa sailed for the United States, arrived in New York, and went to

San Francisco to study at the California School of Fine Arts.[19][20][21] Returning to New York in 1955, she became a United States citizen and established a studio in the city.[21] April of 1955, Chryssa has her first experience at Times Square, which would become a major influence for her work.[22][23] In the same year, she married fellow artist Jean Varda and moved to Sausalito.[24] The couple separated in 1958 and divorced in 1965.[25][24] Although never an official resident of the Coenties Slip, Chryssa was associated with a group of artists connected by this residence.[26][27] During this time, Chryssa had a relationship with Agnes Martin.[28][29][30][31]

Her image is included in the iconic 1972 poster Some Living American Women Artists by Mary Beth Edelson.[32]

At the age of 79, Chryssa died of heart-related problems, in Athens, Greece, on December 23, 2013.[33]

Major works and milestones

1957–1969

Chryssa's first major work was The Cycladic Books, a series of plaster reliefs which the French art critic Pierre Restany described as having produced "the purified and stylized geometric relief which is characteristic of Cycladic sculpture."[34] According to the American art historian and critic Barbara Rose,[17] The Cycladic Books preceded American minimalism by seventeen years.

Arrow: Homage to Times Square is a large 8 ft by 8 ft (2.4 m) work in painted cast aluminum.[35] In a 2005 interview in Vouliagmeni, Chryssa said: "I only ever kept one work for more than 15 years in my studio, "The Arrow" – it is now in Albany, in the Rockefeller Collection."[17]

Chryssa's first solo exhibition was mounted at The Guggenheim.[8][18] Times Square Sky is a 5 ft × 5 ft (1.5 m) × 9.5 in work in neon, aluminum and steel.[36]

Chryssa's work was shown at the Museum of Modern Art in curator Dorothy Canning Miller's Americans 1963 exhibition. The artists represented in the show also included Richard Anuszkiewicz, Lee Bontecou, Robert Indiana, Richard Lindner, Marisol, Claes Oldenburg, Ad Reinhardt, James Rosenquist and others.[37]

The Gates to Times Square, regarded as "one of the most important American sculptures of all time" and "a thrilling homage to the living American culture of advertising and mass communications",

Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York in 1972.[1][39]

Clytemnestra is in the

Iphigeneia at Aulis on Broadway.[17][40] This work, or another version of it, has also been installed outside the Megaron Concert Hall in Athens.[17]

From 1972

The

Whitney Museum of American Art mounted a solo exhibition of works by Chryssa.[18][41] That's All (early 1970s), is the central panel of a triptych related to The Gates of Times Square, was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art between 1975 and 1979.[21][42] Chryssa's solo exhibition at the Gallerie Denise René was reviewed for Time magazine by art critic Robert Hughes before it went on to the Galleries Denise René in Düsseldorf and Paris.[18][21][43] She also received the Guggenheim fellowship.[44]

Chryssa's 70 ft (21 m) Untitled Light Sculpture, six large 'W's connected by cables and programmed electronically to create changing patterns of light through 900 feet of neon tubing, is suspended in the atrium of 33 West Monroe, a

composite honeycomb aluminum and neon in the 1980s and 1990s include Chinatown, Siren, Urban Traffic, and Flapping Birds.[6]

In 1992, after closing her

Athens National Museum of Contemporary Art, which was founded in 2000 and owns Chryssa's Cycladic Books, is in the process of converting the Fix Brewery into its permanent premises.[34][49][50] 'Chryssa & New York' survey was co-organized by the Menil Collection and Dia Art Foundation.[51]

Monographs

A partial listing of monographs on Chryssa's work:

Exhibitions and collections

Partial listings of exhibitions and institutions with works by Chryssa in permanent collections:

Solo exhibitions

Group exhibitions

Collections

Additional exhibitions and collections are listed by the Artforum Culture Foundation,[43] AskART.com,[73] and other sources.

References

Although Chryssa always used the mononym professionally, some fine arts and art auction references nevertheless cite her as Chryssa Vardea, Vardea Chryssa, Chryssa Varda, or Varda Chryssa.

  1. ^ a b c d "A Times Square of the Mind". Time. March 18, 1966. Archived from the original on October 28, 2010.
  2. ^ a b "Chryssa, Artist Who Saw Neon's Potential as a Medium, Dies at 79". The New York Times. January 18, 2014.
  3. ^ "Famous Greek Artist Chryssa Passes Away". December 23, 2013.
  4. ^ Lawrence O'Toole (February 4, 1990). "Where Neon Art Comes of Age". The New York Times.
  5. ^
    Grove Dictionary of Art. Museum of Modern Art
    website.
  6. ^
    aluminum works. The Varo Registry of Women Artists (the registry is named for artist Remedios Varo). Archived from the original
    on December 25, 2007. Retrieved February 29, 2008.
  7. ISBN 978-0714878775. {{cite book}}: |last1= has generic name (help
    )
  8. ^ a b c d e f g "Chryssa: Brief biography and images of 3 works". One piece from The Cycladic Books (1957–1962) and two 1983 works, Untitled and Chinese Cityscape. Art Topos (artopos.org).
  9. Petros Mavromichalis who became Bey
    of Mani in 1815 and is always referred to as 'Petrobey'.
  10. ^
    broken anchor
    ]. It comes and goes in the foreground instead of remaining in the background.
  11. OCLC 892891457
    .
  12. ISBN 978-0-300-27198-0
    .
  13. ^ Gruen, John (March 27, 1966). "Chryssa's Neon Garden". Herald Tribune. New York. p. 36.
  14. ISBN 978-0-300-27198-0
    .
  15. ISBN 978-0-300-27198-0
    .
  16. ^ "Vardea Chryssa Biography". MetroArtWork – Contemporary Art For Everyone. Archived from the original on April 21, 2009.
  17. ^ a b c d e f Ilias Bissias interview (December 13, 2005). "Everything becomes sculpture". Life in Capital A.[permanent dead link]
  18. ^ a b c d e f g h Megakles Rogakos (August 2005). "Vardea Chryssa Biography". American College of Greece. Archived from the original on August 7, 2007. Chryssa's sculptures, with precision and definite form, were a reaction against the prevalent Abstract expressionism of the 1950s ... [she] first made Pop images such as depictions of automobile tires and cigarettes. In sculptures she utilized letters of the alphabet, ideas that predated similar images by Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol.
  19. ^
    Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo
    ) is regarded as one of the most important American sculptures of all time.
  20. ISBN 0-07-141524-6
    .
  21. ^ a b c d Robert Hughes (June 4, 1973). "Mysteries of Neon". Time. Archived from the original on December 14, 2008. [Chryssa] went into neon as fictive archaeology. The result is a chimerical amalgam of cultures, as though Chryssa's eye had got ahead of the present and were looking back on Times Square from a vantage point as remote in time from it as ours is from ancient Greece. ... at her best—as in That's all or the large and visually splendid Today's Special—she can give her apparently explicit light-sculptures an intense mystery, transforming the gallery space into a small Delos of the neon sign.
  22. ISBN 978-0-300-27198-0
    .
  23. ISBN 978-1-929641-00-0
    .
  24. ^ a b "Jean Varda Granted Divorce– He Waited Seven Years". Newspapers.com. Daily Independent Journal. February 25, 1965. p. 5. Retrieved March 29, 2021.
  25. ^ "bio". the varda project. Retrieved December 1, 2019.
  26. ISBN 978-0-300-27198-0
    .
  27. ^ "Chryssa | University at Albany". www.albany.edu. Retrieved March 22, 2024.
  28. ISBN 978-0-300-27198-0
    .
  29. ISSN 0261-3077
    . Retrieved March 22, 2024.
  30. ISBN 978-0-500-29455-0
    .
  31. ISBN 978-1-938922-76-3
    .
  32. ^ "Some Living American Women Artists/Last Supper". Smithsonian American Art Museum. Retrieved January 21, 2022.
  33. ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved March 18, 2016.
  34. ^
    ISBN 0-8109-0366-0. Archived from the original
    on November 16, 2008.
  35. ^ a b "Arrow: Homage to Times Square (sculpture)". Smithsonian American Art Museum inventories database. 2016. Retrieved March 20, 2018.
  36. ^
    aluminum, steel (60" × 60" × 9½"), Walker Art Center
    .
  37. ^ a b "Americans 1963". Exhibition catalogue description, International League of Antiquarian Booksellers.[permanent dead link]
  38. ^ Guy Hubbard (November 2003). "Clip & save art notes: About The Gates to Times Square". Arts & Activities. Archived from the original on September 6, 2004.
  39. ^
    Albright-Knox Art Gallery. "The Gates to Times Square"
    . Sculpture/Construction. Chryssa, 1966. Welded stainless steel, neon, and plexiglass. Overall: 120 × 120 × 120" (304.8 × 304.8 × 304.8 cm.) Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Albert A. List, 1972.
  40. JSTOR 1483450
    .
  41. ^ a b c d National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST) in Athens. "Exhibitions (1969–1981 timeline, Greek artists)". Archived from the original on November 16, 2008.
  42. ^
    JSTOR 1513633. That's All is the central panel of a huge triptych Chryssa worked on for several years and is the culmination of the graphic ideas embodied in The Gates of Times Square (1964-66), the artist's major work of the 1960s. Through her preoccupation with contemporary technology and her fascination with American systems of communication
    , the Greek-born artist has expanded our traditional view of sculpture.
  43. ^ a b Exhibitions listed by the Artforum Culture Foundation.
  44. OCLC 37693713
    .
  45. ^ "33 West Monroe, Chicago". Description on Emporis. Archived from the original on December 28, 2006.
  46. the main street in Manhattan's Chinatown which inspired it, it is a firm favourite with Athenians. Characteristic of the artist's later work, this large, sinewy, dark aluminium sculpture, lit with fiery pink-red neon lights, brims with energy and is really rather breathtaking.[permanent dead link
    ]
  47. Evangelismos station.
    See also: TourTripGreece Athens Metro article Archived March 13, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
    about the "underground art museums" in the stations.
  48. ^ a b Curator and art critic Takis Mavrotas (August 6, 1996). "Projections of Sculpture on screens of the future". Artopos (extract from "Ciné Oasis" catalog). In an age dominated by abstract expressionism ... Chryssa had made her own personal proposal, free of borrowings from or direct references to other artists, beyond the pale of the avant-garde.
  49. ^ The National Museum of Contemporary Art Archived August 27, 2007, at the Wayback Machine founded in 2000 in Athens. The Museum sponsors Archived November 13, 2008, at the Wayback Machine include I. F. Costopoulos Foundation, Stavros Niarchos Foundation, Athens Metro, Alpha Bank, ATEbank, and Otenet. The Museum Building Archived December 9, 2007, at the Wayback Machine (formerly the Fix Brewery).
  50. ^ Dimitris Rigopoulos (January 14, 2003). "The National Museum of Contemporary Art set to get a new 2,500 sq.m. exhibition space". Kathimerini. Archived from the original on December 31, 2013.
  51. ^ "Chryssa New York". The Menil Collection. Retrieved March 22, 2024.
  52. ^ a b Chryssa: Urban Icons event, "13 related objects." Includes oil paintings and other media. 21 Related Objects.
  53. ISBN 0-500-09209-5. Conversations with architect I. M. Pei, art dealer Leo Castelli
    , and others. 148 plates; list of public collections and exhibitions.
  54. ^ "Light Negative Positive" Poster[permanent dead link], March 28, 1968 – April 15, 1968, in Harvard Yard at Robinson Hall, the former Harvard University library which the John Hay Library replaced in 1910.
  55. Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Jacques Lassaigne and Pierre Restany, CHRYSSA: Oeuvres recentes (Recent Works) Archived July 17, 2011, at the Wayback Machine. 1979, in French
    .
  56. ^ "Chryssa New York". The Menil Collection. Retrieved March 22, 2024.
  57. ^ "Chryssa & New York". artguide.artforum.com. Retrieved March 22, 2024.
  58. ^ "Chryssa & New York". Wrightwood 659. Retrieved March 22, 2024.
  59. ^ "Chryssa & New York". artguide.artforum.com. Retrieved March 22, 2024.
  60. ^ Vivien Raynor (June 30, 1991). "Sculptures That Announce Themselves With a Blaze of Light". The New York Times.
  61. ^ Leo Castelli Gallery (November 15, 1997). "Forty Years of Exploration and Innovation: The Artists of the Castelli Gallery 1957–1997". Carnegie Mellon University Center for Arts Management and Technology.
  62. ^ European Cultural Center of Delphi (Council of Europe). "Leading Artists of the 20th century:[permanent dead link] Chryssa – Takis" (June 17, 2000 – July 18, 2000). Works by Chryssa included Chinatown, Piccadilly Circus, Athenian Landscape No. 2 and No. 3, Paris Landscape No 2, Marilyn, Times Square, The Newspaper, and (for the first time) the copper Cycladic Books: Green Series. Eighteen works by Takis included Photovoltaic Energy, Acoustic Chords, and Hommage à Apollon.
  63. ^ European Cultural Center of Delphi (Council of Europe). "Apollo's Heritage"[permanent dead link] (July 4, 2003 – July 30, 2003). Works by sixteen artists: Giorgio de Chirico, Salvador Dalí, Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas, Nikos Engonopoulos, Yannis Tsarouchis, Giorgos Sikeliotis, Takis, Arman, Fernando Botero, Chryssa, Dimitris Mytaras, Alekos Fassianos, Sarantis Karavouzis, Yiannis Psychopedis, Dimitris Sakellion, Georgios Xenos.
  64. Yannis Moralis, Costas Tsoclis, Alekos Fassianos, Sotiris Sorogas, Pavlos, Yiannis Psychopedis, Dimitris Mytaras, Opy Zouni, Novello Finotti, Stephan Antonakos, Chryssa, Günther Uecker
    , and others.
  65. ^
    Ólafur Elíasson, Spencer Finch, Dan Flavin, Christoph Girardet, Joseph Kosuth, Iván Navarro, James Turrell, Thomas Wilfred
    .
  66. ^ "Chryssa". www.documenta14.de. Retrieved March 23, 2019.
  67. ^ "Clytemnestra (sculpture)". Smithsonian American Art Museum database. 2016.
  68. ^ "Empire State Plaza Art Collection". Retrieved November 14, 2018.
  69. Iphigeneia at Aulis by Euripides
    ), 1967 (neon, glass, plastic, copper wire, wood, and timer; 95⅛ × 35½ × 29½ in).
  70. Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art. Thessaloniki. Archived from the original on April 15, 2008. China Town (1975 lithograph
    ). Folded Repeated Forms, Times square city scape, Schismi (1990–1995 sculptures). Arrow (undated construction)
  71. ^ "Chryssa (Vardea)". www.nationalgallery.gr. Retrieved March 23, 2019.
  72. Whitney Museum of American Art
    , New York City.
  73. ^ Museums references on AskART.com.
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