Sophia Vari

Sophia Vari (b.1940, Athens, Greece; d.2023, Monte Carlo, Monaco) was a visual artist known for her investigations into form and balance, working across sculpture, collage, oil and watercolour. In 1958, she graduated from the École des Beaux Arts, in Paris.

Vari’s sculptures evolved through several stages in her last few decades. While her early work from the 1960s onwards was mostly figurative, in the 1980s, Vari began to employ rounded abstract forms that suggested the human body. Eventually she began incorporating planar and constructed forms into her work, and by the mid-1990s she had begun to apply colour to the surfaces of her dynamic sculptures. This use of colour contributed to the movement of Vari’s pieces, and her sculptural works, created both on a monumental scale and as table pieces, appear to move autonomously as the viewer walks around them. Her work across all media shares a certain playfulness and liveliness, with compositions in collage, watercolour and paint pushing into the realm of dimensional space.

Vari’s monumental sculptures have been shown in public locations around the world. Most recently in 2022, where three major sculptures were displayed in Smithson Plaza, London. For each installation, she paid special attention to the way that her works were integrated with the cities in which they were exhibited. Vari was particularly concerned with the way in which the tactile quality of the patina surfaces encouraged a connection with her viewers, while the majestic scale of her public sculptures created a strong visual impact.

Celebrated with almost 100 solo exhibitions over the course of her career, Sophia Vari had museum exhibitions including Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, Italy; the Palazzo Bricherassio, Turin, Italy; The Ludwig Museum, Koblenz, France; and more recently, the Pera Museum, Istanbul, Turkey. Solo exhibitions of Vari’s monumental sculptures in the public realm have taken place in cities including Paris, Rome, Montecarlo, Baden-Baden, Geneva, Pietrasanta, Athens, Madrid and Cartagena de Indias, among others.

Vari’s work is included in international public collections around the world, among them: museum Beelden aan Zee, The Hague; Benaki Museum, Athens; Fondation Veranneman, Kruishoutem, Belgium; Foundation Basil and Elise Goulandris: Museum of Modern Art, Andros, Greece; Fundaçao Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon; Fundación Botero, Biblioteca Luis Angel Arango, Bogota; Musée de la Main, Lausanne, France; Museo de Medellin, Medellin, Colombia; Museo de Ponce, Puerto Rico; National Museum and Alexandros Soultzos Museum, Athens; National Pinacotheca, Athens.