Sophia vari biography

Sophia Vari (b.1940, Athens, Greece; d.2023, Monte Carlo, Monaco) is celebrated for the distinct and coherent visual language through which she investigated abstract volume, form and balance. Working across sculpture, collage, oil and watercolour, Vari neatly navigated diverse influences, from Olmec and Cycladic artistic traditions to European Modernism, in her constant drive to express ‘beauty and harmony’. 

Born in Athens to a Greek father and a Hungarian mother, Vari spent part of her childhood in Switzerland, later studying in England and then Paris, where she became acquainted with movements in modern art, namely Cubism and Surrealism.

She graduated from the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, in 1958 and made primarily figurative paintings throughout the 1960s and early 1970s. In the mid-1970s, Vari became interested in expressing her ideas in another medium and, during a trip to Egypt, came to understand the importance of monumental sculpture.

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