Artist: Sophia Vari

Widely celebrated for her public sculptures, Sophia Vari is exhibiting twelve monumental painted bronze sculptures on Park Avenue from 53rd street to 62nd street. The Nohra Haime Gallery presents 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 in the streets of Paris, Rome, Montecarlo, Beijing, Pietrasanta, Madrid, Athens, Cartagena, Baden-Baden, Geneva, and most recently in London, they will now captivate the New York public.

Sophia Vari (born in Athens, Greece) recently deceased, was an established international visual artist known for polychrome sculptures, collages, oil and watercolor paintings. Her exploration into form and balance has evolved into several stages. Vari has pushed into the realm of dimensional space, as her nuanced geometric forms probe the relationship between the construction of physical space and the history of art. Her work is informed by Cubism, Olmec artifacts, and ancient Greek sculptures.

Early into her career during the 1960s, her canvases were mostly figurative. This changed in the 1980s, when her sculptures suggested human bodies, reflected in their more rounded forms. During the mid-1990s, she flattened the planes and later applied color to the surface, which gave her sculptures another dimension. The color has a tactile quality that gives the works more vitality and movement, her forms appear to be moving as viewers walk around them. She also echoed this dynamic aspect into her paintings and collages.

Both Vari’s monumental and smaller formats have an autonomous life. This is created from the permutation of shapes with a sense of lightness and suspension, yet resolving space and structure with an imposing bearing.

Vari’s monumental sculptures have been shown around the world. In the various installations she has had, Vari pays very close attention to the 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 the pieces.

Sophia Vari attended the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris in 1958. She has exhibited widely internationally and has had over 100 one-person 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 thanks to Barbara McLaughlin and Julia Herzberg from the Fund for Park Avenue, Elizabeth Masella and NYC Parks, Ileana Bouboulis, Nat Oppenheimer and Leslie Garret.