Joannis Avramidis

1922 Batumi, Georgia - 2016 Vienna

  • Title Small column
  • Date 1963 - 1964
  • Technic bronze with brown patina
  • Dimensions height 77.7 cm
  • Signature monogram and numberd on the base: A 2/6
  • Provenance private collection, Germany
  • Literature cf. Semff, Joannis Avramidis. Skulpturen und Zeichnungen, Munich 2005, p. 109, ill. 60
Artist overview Inquire price

Avramidis’s formal language sought to pare down depictions of people into simple, basic shapes. He found inspiration for these forms in classical art and its early-modern interpretation in the Renaissance. His early bronze works described as “torsos” and dating from the years around 1954 already show the artist’s predilection for columnar, vertical sculptures resembling steles and composed of various “stacked” segments. The structure of his predominantly bronze figures is based on mathematical, constructive principles and the column as “the fundamental unit of measurement in the temples of Ancient Greece and the classical symbol of human proportions.”1 Everything coincidental and individual as well as all movement has been eliminated. And yet, despite a considerable degree of abstraction, the shapes denoting each section of the body can be clearly identified. The basis of Avramidis’s abstract formal language is always the human figure, as an exemplary, timeless form constructed out of cross sections and longitudinal sections.

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