Visuals Award – Maria Filopoulou
Summer in Porto Heli. A little girl is enchanted by the turquoise of the sea, is moved by the convening of the soil and observes with the hours the iridescent idiom of the seabed.
Under the strong Mediterranean sunlight he dreams of trips in colors, but also in the world, in the freedom of art, but also in wandering.
At the same time, her agronomist father conveys to her the love, concern and sensitivity of nature.
A canvas is to be the natural continuation for the special painter Maria Filopoulou.
Her desire to learn close to the painter Leonardo Cremonini, whom she admired so much, led her, somewhere in the mid-1980s, to Paris, where her application to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts was accepted by the special committee, in one of the first places.
It was a special period in the history of the art of the dye, as Cremonini was one of the few artists who undertook to defend painting at a time when the “new media” dominated.
He graduated, winning a scholarship from the French government, while already, from those years, friendship and association with many Greek fellow painters was cultivated.
On her return to Greece after ’89, she received support for her work from teachers such as Tetsis and Chronis Botsoglou.
She held her maiden exhibition in 1990 at Asadur Baharian’s gallery, The Hour, with interiors from her atelier in Paris and beyond.
Shortly afterwards, she devotes himself to one of the issues that will be of great concern to her, the iron service stairs. It was her first collaboration with the Zouboulaki gallery, which has been going on ever since.
The greenhouses followed, a theme he discovered in Marathon and Argolida.
The viewer is transported between the plants, into the enclosed protected space.
This “search” brought three exhibitions to Paris, Athens and Thessaloniki. From the beginning of her career, her international presence was intense, with tributes to France, England, the USA, Cyprus.
Her relationship with the sea, which developed from her childhood, quickly found her reflection on the canvas.
Since 1999 it has been a reference point in all sections, whether they concern the beaches, the swimmers, or the waterfalls of Samothraki in 2011.
Iconic year was 2009, during which a large retrospective exhibition of the 20 years of its course took place at the Cyclades Gallery in Ermoupolis, Syros.
Her works are found in public, private collections and museums in Greece and abroad, from the National Gallery, the Greek Parliament and the Bank of Greece, to the Goulandris Museum and the Frisira, Felio and Hatziioannou Collections.
Believing in the power of cultural diplomacy, Maria Filopoulou is a painter who highlights the quality of Greece’s contemporary artistic production abroad.
In her work, the phrase, “A picture, a thousand words” is found in her work, in short, it takes more than a thousand words to describe the power of light emerging from her paintings, from life that emerges as reality, not only as an illustration but also as a breather and an act.
