Joannis Avramidis

Joannis Avramidis was born in 1922, son of a Pontic Greek, in Batum (once UdSSR) on the edge of the Black Sea. He began studying painting at the state art school, but due to Stalin's ethnic cleansing, this came to an end; his father died in 1937 in prison. After many eventful years and having fled to Athens, he was conscripted in 1943 by the National Socialists and deported as a foreign worker back to Vienna. At the end of the Second World War he studied painting under Robin Christian Andersen (1945-1949) at the Vienna Akademie der bildenden Künste, and from 1953 to 1956 attends Fritz Wotrubas' sculpture classes. Since then, the search for the 'absolute figure' stands at the centre of his work. Consequently, two eras serve as sources of inspiration for the artist, eras in which the figure and its proportions were held as the measure of all things. These are the classical antiquity and the Italian Renaissance. Avramidis allows the borders between abstraction and figurative depiction to merge in his sculptures. Softly rounded curves suggest the human body without defining it, whilst various profile views are fanned out, as though blurred. In 1962 Avramidis represented Austria in the 31st Biennale in Venice, and participated in documenta II (1964) and documenta 6 (1977). From 1965 to his retirement in 1992 he held the position of Professor of sculpture at the Academy of Arts in Vienna. Joannis Avramidis lives and works in Vienna.