Medea I

Alex Mylona studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts (1945-50) under sculptor Michael Tombros. After finishing her studies, Alex Mylona devoted herself wholeheartedly to art, visiting a number of prominent arts centers in Europe. She kept a artworkshop in Paris and took part in exhibitions both in Greece and abroad. She had the opportunity of meeting with important modernist artists, including Hans Arp, Alberto Giacometti and Ossip Zadkine, whose influence is apparent in her sculptures dating from that period ― in terms of their form, austere expression, arrangement and an often-evident tendency towards dematerialization. Medea is a representative artwork from the 1950s built with cement. Alex Mylona chose a theme from Greek mythology, charged with a tragic, dramatic storyline. She creates a linear, volumeless, symmetrical composition, with angular contours, unnatural heads, sharp body members and a highlighted sex ― a fragile composition, in which the concepts of violence and motherhood coexist alongside each other. With Medea, she encapsulates her personal agonies, which reflect on the living conditions of a woman in the 1950s, determined to devote herself entirely to her art, no matter the social ramifications arising from clashing with typical conventions of domestic life and child raising.