Biography

Chryssa Vardea-Mavromichali, known only as Chryssa, was a Greek-born American sculptor known for her monumental assemblages. She combined neon, bronze, aluminum, plaster, wood, canvas and paint, as well as found objects. She began using in neon in 1962 and was one of the first artists to transform this ubiquitous advertising material into art. Chryssa’s interest in communication and the written word majorly influenced her sculptural work and is often attributed to learning a new alphabet when she moved from Athens to the United States. Her first major piece, Cycladic Books (1955), comprised small terracotta reliefs that resemble tablets, constructed from plaster casts of the inside folds of cardboard boxes. Though “letterless,” the geometric indentations caused by the folds of the boxes resemble simple characters or symbols. In the 1960s, her large scale aluminum, neon, and Plexiglas sculptures incorporated the English alphabet and indecipherable cursive letters.

Chryssa’s Plaque (1965) was commissioned by Art in America issue number 6, 1965 – 1966, during the period when Jean Lipman was editor-in-chief (1941 – 1970) of the magazine. The bronze tablet incorporates a collage of newspaper text, giving monumental permanence to the quotidian and short-lived qualities of newsprint. Chryssa’s newspaper paintings and drawings, sculptures, and prints were innovative printmaking experiments using typography, newsprint collages, and metal molds to create forms in raised relief.  An edition of eight, the work recalls the tablets of Chryssa’s Cycladic Books; their backwards and indecipherable print transforming into graphic characters.

Chryssa was born in Athens, Greece in 1933 and died in 2013. She studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, Paris and San Francisco Art Institute. She has been exhibited widely in the United States with her first solo exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum, New York in 1961. Her work has been included in numerous group exhibitions at the Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and recently at documenta 14. Chryssa’s work is in the collections of major museums, including the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

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