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Christos Capralos
Greek, born 1909
Greek sculptor. He studied painting at the Higher School of Fine Arts in Athens and sculpture in Paris with Marcel Gimond (b 1894) and at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and the Académie Colarossi. From 1940 to 1946 he worked in isolation in his village, inspired by the people around him, especially his mother. The solid structure, dense shapes, simplified planes and regular distribution of light on surfaces reveal the influence of Emile-Antoine Bourdelle, Aristide Maillol, Charles Despiau and Gimond, and of archaic Greek sculpture. These works were exhibited at the Parnassos Gallery, Athens, in November 1946 and established his reputation. After 1946 he lived and worked in Athens. His Pindos Monument (1.1×40.0 m, 1952–6; Aigina, the artist’s studio), a stone frieze planned during World War II, tells the epic story of war and peace. The composition, inspired by Egyptian carvings, ancient Greek stelae and folk art, is simple, ordered and rhythmic. The harsh lines of the carving, in varying relief, are combined with a slightly undulated surface. After 1957 Capralos returned to such traditional methods as hammering and bronze-casting with the lost-wax technique. Hammering imposed taut outlines, dense masses and economy of line. At the same time he worked the casts for the bronzes straight on to sheets of wax, using heat. In the workshop he built in Aigina in 1962 he made a series of anthropomorphic stone objects and carvings that revive the Cycladic tradition. From 1965 he began to work also in wood. The organic shapes of the eucalyptus inspired his highly expressive monumental sculptures (e.g. Crucifixion: Parody of the East Pediment of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia; Aigina, the artist’s studio). Capralos also made innumerable figurines in clay and many ceramics. A year before his death he founded the Christos and Souli Capralos Foundation, to which he donated all his works.
Marina Lambraki-Plaka. "Capralos, Christos." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T013891 (accessed April 27, 2012).
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