Katy Stephanides

Biography

Katy Stephanides held her first solo exhibition in 1972 at the Acropolis Gallery in Nicosia, when she was about forty-seven. Most of the works were geometric abstractions, and some clearly belonged with Op art and Minimalism.

She was born in 1925 in Limassol, the daughter of Tasoula and Panos Fasouliotis, and bore the surname Fasouliotis. Her father edited the newspaper Paratiritis (“The Observer”), and her uncle George Fasouliotis drew cartoons for the newspaper To Gelio (“The Laugh”). She liked drawing from childhood, and her parents encouraged it. In 1948–1955 she studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts: painting with Umbertos Argyros and Yiannis Moralis, and art history with Pandelis Prevelakis. She then moved to London, took classes at Saint Martin’s School of Art and, until 1960, studied the collections of museums and galleries in London and Paris. In 1961 she returned to Cyprus and for the next twenty-five years taught art at a secondary school. That same year she took part in the exhibition “Cypriot Artists”, organised by the magazine Kypriaka Chronika (“Cypriot Chronicles”). Her early works reflected the new currents of the 1950s and 1960s, with visible influence from Cézanne, André Lhote and Malevich. In the mid-1960s she married the writer and painter Tasos Stephanides; they had two children, a son, Panos, who became a painter, and a daughter, Marina, who became a writer.

Before her first solo show she had exhibited at the Biennale of the Alexandria Museum of Fine Arts (1963), at the exhibition “Contemporary Cypriot Art” at the Commonwealth Institute, shown in Edinburgh and London (1970), and at the São Paulo Biennial (1971). In Nicosia she was moving away from the depiction of objects and nature toward movement and form in space, exploring colour, shape and texture. The influence of Naum Gabo, Piet Mondrian and Sophie Taeuber-Arp can be seen in the geometric pieces.

After the coup of 1974 in Cyprus her manner changed. References to Greek history entered her work, which she herself made a political statement. She was concerned with how war affects women, and her paintings began to include stylised female figures, more expressionistic in manner, as well as images of Aphrodite and the Pentadaktylos mountains. Through these motifs she spoke of Cyprus’s detachment from its Hellenic past and of the events of those years.

Her second solo exhibition took place in 1978 at the Zygos Gallery in Nicosia: alongside older works it showed the series “The Depth of the World”, with unidentified female figures and the limits that world events impose on people. At the third, in 1982, her painting took in Surrealism and Pop Art. Through the 1980s she continued with the theme of limits placed on women by society, marking boundaries with signs such as the telephone and traffic signs. By the fourth exhibition, in 1988 at the Apocalypse Gallery in Nicosia, she was working with the play of colour, changes of form and movement in an expressionistic manner. The fifth solo exhibition, at the Morfi Gallery in Limassol, brought her back to pure abstraction; at the sixth, at the Apocalypse, this was even more marked: smooth vivid colours on a flat surface without depth or volume. In 1998, at the same gallery, she introduced motifs of traditional handwork, wall hangings and embroidery, and joined fine art with folk art to speak of femininity. The exhibition “Metamorphoses” at the Argo Gallery in Nicosia (2003) continued these themes, with references to folklore and spirituality, in vivid colours and a thoroughly modern presentation.

Katy Stephanides died on 24 March 2012. The art historian Eleni Nikita called her work a “bridge” that allowed Cypriot art to reach the point where it is today. Her works are held in the Byzantine Museum of the Archbishop Makarios III, the Loukia and Michalakis Zambelas Art Museum, the Municipal Art Gallery of Limassol and the State Gallery of Contemporary Cypriot Art. In 2013 the Apocalypse Gallery held the exhibition “Descendance”, with previously unexhibited works by Katy, her husband Tasos and their son Panos.