Joannis Avramidis

1922 Batumi, Georgia - 2016 Vienna

Avramidis, born in 1922 in Batum, in today's Georgia, studied painting and graphics at the State Art School in Batum. In 1939 he emigrated to Athens with his family and came to Vienna as a foreign worker in 1943. After the war, he initially attended the painting class at the Academy of Fine Arts with Robin Christian Andersen. In 1953 he entered the sculptor class Fritz Wotrubas, where he studied until 1956. His use of forms aims at the representation of the human being in a reducted, simple and basic form. In this context, Avramidis often emphasized the tradition of ancient art or its modern reception in the Renaissance, from which he drew his inspiration. The early bronze works from 1954, referred to as the torso, already show his particular liking of a columnar, upright, stele-like perception of sculpture, which consists of various "stacked" segments. The structure of his figures, which were predominantly cast in bronze, is based on mathematical-constructive principles as well as on the shape of the column, "the basic unit of measurement in the temple of ancient Greece and the classic symbol for human measure." 1 Anything random, individual and every movement has also been removed. And yet, despite extensive abstraction, the volumes of the individual body sections are clearly recognizable. Despite its abstract form, the basis is always the human figure - as an exemplary timeless form, constructed of transverse and longitudinal sections.

1 Gudrun Danzer, Joannis Avramidis, Figur III, 1963, Austrian Sculpture Park, http://www.museum-joanneum.at/de/skulpturenpark/skulpturen/joannis-avramidis