Joannis Avramidis

Joannis Avramidis (Greek: Iωάννης Aβραμίδης; born 23 September 1922, Batumi – 16 January 2016, Vienna) was a contemporary Greek-Austrian painter and sculptor.

[3][4][5] He began studying painting at the State Art School of Batumi in 1937, the same year his father had violently died in prison as a victim of ethnic repression by Stalin's henchmen.

Alas, his studies came to a premature end in 1939 when the whole family (i.e. his mother and her 4 children) had to re-emigrate again, this time to Greece, due to the USSR's sustained policy leading to ethnic cleansing.

[4][5][6][7][8] Once the Second World War had come to an end, Avramidis was categorised as suspicious by the Soviet occupation authorities in Vienna due to his knowledge of Russian and deported to an internment camp near Budapest.

[7] There Avramidis began studying painting as a regular student in the masterclass of Robin Christian Andersen (1890–1969), from 1945 till 1949, at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (in German : Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien).

Aber dann kam ich mit einem Kopf an die Akademie, Wotruba holte sofort seine gesamte Schülerschaft.» (in German); Translation :

[10] Franco Russoli, a friend of Giacometti and director of the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan, later expanded on this comment by recognising in the work of Avramidis "the constantly recurring image of loneliness, the search for a refuge in the embrace of people locked in their own inability to communicate".

[11][12][8] After the death in 2014 of his wife Annemarie, a poet and accomplished sculptor in her own right, he completely withdrew from public life, and during the night of January 16, 2016, Joannis Avramidis died at the age of 93, in Vienna, surrounded by his family.

[citation needed] «Ich habe das Wunschbild, daß meine Arbeit so wenig wie möglich zeitabhängig ist.

Avramidis' utopia of the "Absolute Figure" grew out of the constant struggle between the "data" wrested from nature and the construction forced by the idea in equal measure: drawing and sculpture as an indissolubly interwoven approach to an ideal image of man that transcended the ages and had to be reconstructed.

Avramidis' unique achievement is based on the laconic sobriety of his sculptural conception, which constructively strives for the greatest possible objectification of form and yet means nothing more than its sublimated sensuality.

[7] In 1966, Avramidis started making a new type of sculptures, called "Bandfiguren" (Band Figures) — as an antithesis to his closed upright "Säulenfiguren"—, during his tenure as visiting professor at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg.

[38] A recurring topos in Avramidis' oeuvre is the human head, in an often highly stylised, upright, even stern representation which is crystallising into total abstraction.

As in his Figuren, features that are usually associated with the facial recognition of an individual person such as eyes, mouth, nose or ears cannot be distinguished in a lot of the sculptures or the drawings & paintings he produced over the years.

"Kopf - Das trojanische Pferd" (Head - The Trojan Horse),[55][56] from 1970, changes course again both in shape as in materiality by resorting to the use of an orange-tinged synthetic resin filled in on an aluminium lattice-work construction.

[33] "Kopf mit tiefenräumlichen Flächen I" (Head with Deep Spatial Surfaces I), from 1969/70, a version of which is shown in a courtyard at the German Bundestag, boldly offers a dramatic counterpoint to the previously rounded shapes.

In 2003, he conceived of "Rechter Halbkopf" (Right Semi-Head),[62][63] going back to the same mixed media technique used in 1970 on "Kopf - Das trojanische Pferd" (Head - The Trojan Horse).

[29] Some rather compelling paintings in earthy reds or steely blues accompany or even re-invigorate the understanding of well known sculptures as they offer a different view of the inner thinking of Avramidis.

Other paintings open up the private world of his restricted circle of friends for whom he apparently loved making portraits, such as Klaus Demus (1983) or the architect Roland Rainer (1987).

[29] He also drew portraits of the poet Michael Guttenbrunner (1983),[64] his brother Thomas (1969)[65] and of himself, in versions dating back to 1970[66] and 1990,[67] all donated to the National Gallery of Greece.

From the 1980s onwards, Avramidis also painted a series of unusual colour studies, termed "Sonnen" (Suns), abstractions within the confines of a pure circular form, often on a white background.

He even started painting landscapes, from memory, reminiscent of his walks in the Prater park between the sculptors’ building of the Academy of Fine Arts and the state studios in the Krieau area where he worked.

Undoubtedly the attraction lay in the fact that the act of painting or drawing is performed rapidly, almost instinctively, while sculpture, especially the cerebral type Avramidis committed to, requires time, reflection and nearly as much preparatory work as architecture.