Kostas Tsoklis

Biography Selected works

Biography

Born 1930 in Athens. Studied at the Athens Academy of Fine Arts (1948-54) under Moralis. Lived and worked in Rome (1957-60) with a scholarship from the State Scholarships Foundation, then moved to Paris, where he lived until 1976. Went to Berlin with a DAAD scholarship (1971-2), then divided his time between Athens and Paris until 1983. Has spent increasingly long periods in Greece ever since. Has shown his work in solo exhibitions in the largest cities in Europe and the United States, and taken part in major international group events, including: Paris Biennale (1963, 1965), Sao Paulo Biennale (1965), Documenta (Kassel 1975). Represented Greece at the Venice Biennale 1986, with Karas. Tribute to his youthful work (1950-9) presented by the Frysira Museum (2001). Major retrospective of his work in the National Museum of Contemporary Art (2001). Has been a member of the Sigma group. His works for public spaces include the forecourt of the Archaeological Museum, Thessaloniki (1988), and the Ethnikis Amynis underground railway station, Athens (2000). One of the most famous Greek artists of the first post-war generation, Tsoclis got to know contemporary art trends in their birthplace. Yet his own work represents none of them, though it carries hints of conceptual art, nouveau realisme, and pop art. Although the third dimension was very quickly added to his canvases, his compositions were still characterised by a painterly approach. An element of trompe l'?il runs through his entire ?uvre, not in the traditional sense of the transferring of three dimensions to a flat surface, but by dissolving the boundaries between the painted and the real space. Since 1985, he has been using video images to include the element of time in his work.