Eleftheria Tseliou gallery is honored to present Cosmas Xenakis: The Girls. The show opens on Wednesday, April 25 and will be on display until the 2nd of June 2018.
In the context of the series of exhibitions established by the gallery, interested in the work of historical and innovative artists starting in 2016 with the show/tribute to the sculptor Ioanna Spiteri –Veropoulou (1924-2000), the gallery presents an aspect of the rich and significant body of work of Cosmas Xenakis (1924-2000). As Spyros Moschonas mentions in the catalogue of the large retrospective exhibition which took place at the Benaki Museum in 2015, curated by George Hadjimichalis (Cosmas Xenakis, MIET, Athens, 2015, curated by Dionysis Kapsalis and George Hadjimichalis), «He was one of the most innovative and, at the same time, the most hermetic Greek artists of the first post-war decades, a creator who moved with remarkable consistency and incomparable quality across a wide range of expressive fields, experimenting with form, material, and even the concept of artwork itself. He was a painter, a sculptor, a set designer, a creator of complex happenings and, of course, an architect, who dared to take on projects of a monumental scale and the creation of artwork that intervened upon the landscape. More than anything, however, he was an intellectual who understood art not merely through a cosmetic approach, nor as a technical process towards pure form but, primarily, as a “science” of sight, a “spiritual” process addressed equally to the initiated and the uninitiated, as an expression of spirit beyond any borders or national schools».
The show focuses on works that the artist created, starting in 1970 entitled The Girls, to captivate the charm of the African women that made an impression on him during his journey to Nigeria. On view, there is also an 8mm film with screenings from the 3rd Hellenic Week Contemporary Music (1968) for Jani Christou’s work Epicycle, from the 4th Hellenic Week of Contemporary Music (1971) for Cosmas Xenakis’s Enforcement work, as well as a historical interview of Xenakis to Savvas Kontaratos.
Cosmas Xenakis was born in Romania in 1925, he was the younger brother of the composer and architect Iannis Xenakis and of the philosopher Iason Xenakis. He was a painter, a sculptor and an architect with important and pioneering work.