Chryssa

Chryssa (Chryssa Vardea) was born in Athens in 1933. She studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris (1953–54), where she encountered Surrealism and met André Breton, Max Ernst, and Edgard Varèse. She later attended the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco (1954–55). By the end of 1954 she had moved to New York, where she was captivated by the city lights and what she described as the “neo-Byzantine” aesthetic of Times Square. Between 1957 and 1962 she created the series "Cycladic Books", regarded as precursors of Minimalism. In 1961 she held her first solo exhibitions at the Betty Parsons Gallery and at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. In 1962, inspired by the giant illuminated signs and billboards of Times Square, she began incorporating neon light into her work, combining it with metal. From 1964 to 1966 she worked on the monumental sculpture "The Gates of Times Square". Her international presence grew rapidly: she participated twice in the São Paulo Biennial (1963, 1969) and in the Venice Biennale (1972), while two important monographs on her work were published during her lifetime, one by Sam Hunter (1974) and another by Pierre Restany (1977). In 1992 she closed her SoHo studio and returned to Greece, and in 1997 she presented a solo exhibition of her "Cycladic Books" at the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens. Among her public works are "Clytemnestra" (1967), installed outside the Athens Concert Hall, and "Mott Street" (1983), placed at the Evangelismos Metro Station in Athens. She died in Athens in 2013.