A Tribute, Twelve Monumental Sculptures
May 20–November 5, 2023
500A West 21st Street, New York, NY 10011
Widely celebrated for her public sculptures, Sophia Vari will be exhibiting twelve monumental works on Park Avenue from 53rd street to 62nd street starting May 20th until November 5th. The Nohra Haime Gallery is pleased to present this installation in collaboration with The Sculpture Committee of The Fund for Park Avenue and the NYC Parks’ Art in the Parks Program. After having been shown on the streets of Paris, Rome, Montecarlo, Pietrasanta, Madrid, Athens, Cartagena, Baden-Baden, Geneva, Beijing, and recently in London, they will now captivate the New York public.
Sophia Vari (born in Athens, Greece) is an established international visual artist known for polychrome sculptures, paintings, collages and watercolors. Through exploration of form and balance Vari’s work has evolved through several stages. Much of her work is informed by Cubism, Olmec artifacts and ancient Greek sculptures. These twelve monumental sculptures displayed on Park Avenue have pushed into the realm of dimensionality, as nuanced geometric forms probe the relationship between the construction of physical space in relation to the history of art.
During the 1960s, her large scale canvases were mostly figurative. This shifted in the 1980s, when her sculptures conveyed human figures, constructed in robust rounded forms. During the mid-1990s, she flattened the planes and later applied color to the surface, which gave her sculptures an extra dimension. The color has a tactile quality that creates more vitality and movement giving the forms fluidity as the viewers walk around them. This dynamic depth of space was also echoed throughout her paintings and collages.
The autonomy of Sophia Vari’s work is carried across both the monumental and smaller scale of her sculputes. This is accomplished through the permutation of shapes with lightness and suspension, while determining space and structure with bold imposing bearing. Vari’s monumental sculptures have been shown around the world, with each installation she ensures the seemless integration of her work within the cities. Complexity, elegance and harmony merge to become part of the site specific space, exhibiting a powerful connection with each work of art.
Sophia Vari attended the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris in 1958, has exhibited widely internationally and has had over 100 solo exhibitions. Museum exhibitions include The Ludwig Museum, Kombletz; the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence; the Palazzo Bricherassio, Torino; and more recently, the Pera Museum, Istanbul. Vari’s work is included in international public collections around the world, including: National Museum and Alexandros Soultzos Museum, Athens; National Pinacotheca, Athens, Museum of Modern Art, Andros, Greece; Fundaçao Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon; Fundación Botero, Biblioteca Luis Angel Arango, Bogota; Museo de Medellín, Medellin, Colombia; Museo de Ponce, Puerto Rico; museum Beelden aan Zee, The Hague; Benaki Museum, Athens; Fondation Veranneman, Kruishoutem, Belgium; Foundation Basil and Elise Goulandris. Special thank you to Barbara McLaughlin and Julia Herzberg from The Fund for Park Avenue, Elizabeth Masella and NYC Parks, Ileana Bouboulis and Leslie Garret for making this installation possible.
Dates: 5/20/2023 - 11/5/2023
Where: Park Avenue between 53rd and 62nd Street, New York, NY
For more information: Sabrina Borrero Baez T 212 888 3550 or gallery [at] nohrahaimegallery.com
