Joannis Avramidis

Joan­nis AVRAMIDIS was born on Sep­tem­ber 26, 1922 to Greek par­ents in Batu­mi on the Black Sea. From 1937 to 1939 he stud­ied at the local state art school. In 1939 the fam­i­ly emi­grat­ed to Greece, where Avramidis lived in Athens until 1943. In 1943 he moved to Vien­na. From 1945 to 1949 he stud­ied paint­ing at the Acad­e­my of Fine Arts in Vien­na with Robin Chris­t­ian Ander­sen, and from 1953 to 1956 he trained as a sculp­tor with Fritz Wotru­ba. With his abstract­ed mon­u­men­tal fig­ures, the artist gained noto­ri­ety as ear­ly as the late 1950s. Striv­ing for a bal­ance between the empha­sis on the fig­ure and the simul­ta­ne­ous abstrac­tion of the form, Avramidis devel­oped an inde­pen­dent style based on the exam­ple of Greek archa­ic and clas­si­cal sculp­tures. The artist achieved his inter­na­tion­al break­through when he rep­re­sent­ed Aus­tria at the Venice Bien­nale in 1962. From 1965 to 1966, Joan­nis Avramidis head­ed the life draw­ing class at the Vien­na Acad­e­my. In the fol­low­ing two years he was a vis­it­ing pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Fine Arts in Ham­burg. In 1968 he received a pro­fes­sor­ship at the Acad­e­my of Fine Arts in Vien­na and led a mas­ter class for sculp­ture until his retire­ment in 1992. With his work, the artist was rep­re­sent­ed in numer­ous exhi­bi­tions and exhi­bi­tion par­tic­i­pa­tions in Ger­many and abroad. Joan­nis Avramidis was a mem­ber of the Vien­na Seces­sion, cor­re­spond­ing mem­ber of the Acad­e­my in Athens and the Bavar­i­an Acad­e­my of Fine Arts. In addi­tion to the City of Vien­na Prize for Fine Arts in 1964 and the Grand Aus­tri­an State Prize for Fine Arts in 1973, he was award­ed the Aus­tri­an Dec­o­ra­tion of Hon­or for Sci­ence and Art in 1985. Avramidis dies on Jan­u­ary 16, 2016 in Vien­na. 1961 — first exhi­bi­tion par­tic­i­pa­tion, 1980 — first solo exhi­bi­tion at Galerie Welz.