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arIa KoMIaNoU

       1938 born in Athens, greece
       lives and works in Athens, greece



         Aria Komianou is a printmaker, using techniques of etching and wood engraving. Throughout her career
     as a wood-engraver, the technique that interests her the most, she has consistently taken advantage of the
     potentialities that this art media provides her to express her artistic vision with animated dynamism and clarity.
         Her work from the 1970s and 1980s depicted observable or concrete reality, not only as a faithful disse-
     mination of realistic forms, but also a delineation of the intrinsic or transcendental nature of her subject matter.
     space in Komianou’s work remains indistinct and without a specific reference, however, within the framework
     presented, living and lifeless creatures take on a significant role. Birds, fruit, flowers, and common objects
     from daily life become monumental in size and expressive in quality in a way that can astonish the viewer with
     their intensity. scarcity of color, spread over large uniform surfaces, and an absence of decorative forms, an
     antithesis of the basic elements of art are characteristic of Komianou’s artwork. Her emphasis is on the con-
     ventional, stressing the substantive, which makes it possible for her to convey an immediacy of the ‘whole’ and
     expose these esoteric rhythms most effectively. In her latest work, following a consistent course, Komianou has
     progressed to a stage in her development where dominant themes of vegetation are portrayed in monumen-
     tal proportion. By depending primarily on the elements of lyricism and curvilinear shapes and accenting the
     antithesis of black and white,
         Komianou manages to express the subjective and essential content of her work with great lucidity and
     simplicity without sacrificing the objective representation of reality.
                                 (THAnOs CHrIsTOU, assistant ProFessor oF art history, UniVersity oF ioanina)
     COMpOsITION #379, 1999 Woodcut 59.5 x 57,5 cM. / 23½ x 22½ in.  
        COMpOsITION #442, 2001 Woodcut 43 x 130 cM. / 17 x 51½ in.

























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