Natalia Mela-Konstantinidi

Born in Kifissia in 1923, Natalia Mela-Konstantinidi was the granddaughter of Pavlos Melas, a Greek national hero during the Macedonian Struggle (1904–1908). She studied sculpture at the Athens School of Fine Arts from 1942 to 1946, with Kostas Dimitriadis and Michalis Tombros. She worked alongside the sculptor Thanassis Apartis and the architect Dimitris Pikionis. She was a founding member of the Armos group and participated in its shows at the Zappeion Exhibition Hall (1949 and 1952). In 1951 she married the architect Aris Konstantinidis. She took part in the Panhellenic exhibitions and in group shows abroad (London, Bucharest, Salzburg, Vienna, New York, Paris, São Paulo). In 1963 she had her first solo show at the Zygos Gallery. She designed sets and masks for the National Theater, the Art Theater, and Koula Pratsika’s school. In 1986 she created sculptures for Kostas Sfikas’s film Allegory. Her early works—mainly busts—were in marble and stone. Later, influenced by Greek mythology, she created figures in concrete, bronze, and iron, including satyrs, bulls, rams, goats, and cockerels, and also in paper—birds, hedgehogs, owls, and peacocks. In 2008 the Benaki Museum organized a retrospective of her work. She died in Athens in 2019.