Anthropocentrism

Αlthough some remained committed to the academic approach, or to the post-Rodin French school style, others increasingly turned towards more simplified and abstract shapes, each shaping his personal style through various influences by the European avant-garde.  Thus, they approached the human figure with a new perception, which led to a diversity of treatments: simplified, or completely stylised and suggestive, fragmentary, or expressionistic.

Others, from the early 1950s,began to adopt more simplified and abstract forms, resulting in a schematic, allusive, fragmentary, or expressionist rendering of the human figure,  which, was used sometimes as a means to express political or social protest, agonizing mental states or personal experiences.

His figures are rendered schematically, in the form of a column or pillar, isolated or in a multiplicity of combinations, and they are characterized by the coexistence of vertical and horizontal subjects, the vertebrae-like arrangement and the rhythmical repetition of the elements which make up the volumes.

The female figure sparked the creation of many small and large compositions. Sometimes static, elsewhere in motion, these pieces formulate Efthymiadi’s personal view of the harmonious rendering of female grace.

The very shape of the shell offered the solution for the creation of the work, with its endless coiling and uncoiling. Schematic but totally recognizable, “Lot’s Wife”, wound in her cloak, stands petrified, motionless and silent.

Dionyssis Gerolymatos works with hard materials – stone, marble, cement – in order to create works of a broad thematic range, the fruit of free inspiration or commissions. His oeuvre is characterized by formalisation, fragmentation, an enigmatic atmosphere and monumentality. Exploring the expressive potential of his material, he creates surrealistic or expressionistic compositions in which he expresses concepts or thought fragments, often giving actual form to lines of poetry.

He began using bronze in 1957. The human body became transformed into Victories and mythological figures, ancient hoplite soldiers, couples, and mothers with children.
 At the same time, Kapralos’ compositions became highly abstracted and often fragmented. The fragmented rendition and the intentional, exaggerated distortion gave his work its dramatic character, or emphasized that quality.

“Vietnam” is characteristic from this standpoint. Its content is eloquently declared in the inscriptions engraved on the piece itself: “VIETNAM” and “DICTATORSHIP SHAME”. Kapralos thus expressed his protest against a catastrophic war and a dreadful period in recent Greek history that coincided with it chronologically.

Giorgos Lambrou turned to sculpture in 1972. His early works consisted of wire constructions, maintaining contact with visual reality and characterized by austerity, stylisation and an interest in capturing the essential.

He went on to create solid bronze figures without limbs nor individuality, closely interlinked with one another and surrounded by horizontal wavy grooves, invoking a stifling atmosphere. In these works as well as in his “Wastebaskets”, Lambrou practises social criticism, voicing his protest for today’s mass society and the rejection of values.