Joannis Avramidis

Biography

Joannis Avramidis was born in 1922 in Batumi (then USSR) on the Black Sea as the son of Pontic Greeks. He began to study painting at the State Art School there, which he had to abandon due to Stalin's ethnic cleansing; his father died in prison in 1937. After dramatic, eventful years and his escape to Athens, where he lived from 1939 to 1943, he was forced to serve his time by the National Socialists in 1943 and deported to Vienna as a foreign worker. After the end of the Second World War, he studied painting at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts with Robin Christian Andersen before switching to Fritz Wotruba's sculpture class from 1953 to 1956. The artist had his international breakthrough when he - together with Friedensreich Hundertwasser - represented Austria at the 1962 Venice Biennale in 1962. As early as 1973 he was awarded the Grand Austrian State Prize for his complete artistic oeuvre. From 1965 to 1966 Joannis Avramidis was head of the class for nude drawing at the Vienna Academy, followed by an intermezzo as visiting professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Hamburg. From 1968 until his retirement in 1992 he finally led a master class for sculpture at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. Numerous museum exhibitions as well as his participation in the Biennale Venezia 1962, documenta III (1964) and documenta 6 (1977) in Kassel brought him great recognition and are important milestones in Joannis Avramidis' work. Most recently, the oeuvre of the great Austrian sculptor was presented in a comprehensive exhibition at the Leopold Museum in Vienna in 2017.