“Light Negative Positive – The Greekness of Chryssa”

Starting on Friday 14 October 2022, the MOMus-Museum of Alex Mylona is hosting the exhibition “Light Negative Positive – The Greekness of Chryssa”, paying tribute to this great Greek-American artist.

Chryssa Vardea (1933-2013) was born in Athens. She studied Painting at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris (1953-1954) and the School of Fine Arts in San Francisco, California (1954-1955). In 1955 she settled in New York.

Her creativity was at the cutting edge of innovation in US and international art, mainly in the 50s and 60s. Her works chiefly included sculptures and assemblages, using modern materials, such as neon lights. She was in desperate and indisputable search of reality in art, while remaining free and detached, to express her era.

Her main aim was to maintain a dialogue between her cultural background and the complexity of the materialistic and bright world of New York, where she lived for a large part of her life. New York is the hub the mass consumption culture and IT.

The core of the exhibition at the Museum of Alex Mylona hosts designs by Chryssa, donated to the State Museum of Contemporary Art by architect, researcher and author Alexandros Tzonis and his partner Liane Lefaivre in 2017. Today, they are part of the MOMus collection.

For the purposes of the exhibition, the Alpha Bank Art Collection lent 4 marble sculptures to the Museum of Alex Mylona from the emblematic series of works by the artist titled “Cycladic Books”. The “Cycladic Books” had been created using plaster in the period 1957-1962. In 1996 Chryssa decided to recreate them using Pentelic marble, the typical material used in sculpture, producing a different version of the works. Because of the “Cycladic Books”, Chryssa is considered a precursor of minimalist art and one of the most significant Greek female sculptors.