Rundfigur (Oberkörper) by Joannis Avramidis

Artwork Description

Original title of the artwork: Rundfigur (Oberkörper) / Round figure (upper body)

The artist is particularly famous for his partly life size and larger than life bronze sculptures that embody normative aesthetics. A lot of his works are exhibited in public spaces: in Vienna, Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and Athens. Avramidis mainly worked with bronze according to plaster models; he would later apply synthetic resin, or massive aluminium as well as copper and other materials. Joannis Avramidis’ sculptural work primarily refers to the human form and even in its maximum state of abstraction continues to maintain its reference to human shape and posture. His focus, however, is not the silhouette, but the “inner space of the body“  – a strongly compressed and condensed body, which, even if applied in plurality, produces a compact form. Without sexual characteristics and a rounded off surface, his figures turn into de-individualised members of a group of columns merged into one. The artist only assigns physical features through a stylised, horizontal segmentation. His figural compositions unfold like trees up in the air. The tree as an autonomous subject would also occur in his work. In the 1960s, Avramidis increasingly followed up on the depiction of bodies in movement. The artistic examination of dynamics would eventually manifest itself in his reclining figures.