Siamkouri Magda (1951)

Born in Thessaloniki in 1951, she studied painting and printmaking at the Athens School of Fine Arts (1980-1985) under D. Mytaras, P. Tetsis and Th. Exarchopoulos. She continued with postgraduate studies in London on a Greek state scholarship (1986-1988), at the Royal College of Art and at St. Martin’s School of Art (1986-1990). In 1992 she presented her first solo exhibition of painting in Athens (Nees Morfes).
In her painting initially she moved away from representation towards abstraction, and soon turned to paper as her material for non-figurative constructions outside the canvas; the emphasis in her three-dimensional, wall-mounted works of paper pulp was on variations of texture and colour. However, she never lost interest in the forms of nature. This is evident in her prints, where the morphology of tree trunks and branches are freely rendered in atmospheric compositions with a clear structure.
Over time, the representational elements return in her painting as well. In her recent series of large-scale compositions with black ink, the natural forms are freely combined with an abstract approach in images that seem like dreamlike landscapes. The expressive effect is based on the poetic atmosphere of the images and the graded light through the use of black in varying densities.
Her interest in the suggestive power of light and the ambiguity of the image is also evident in her photographic works, inspired by the light emitted by television screens, which she exhibited in 2003.
She is a lecturer at the Athens School of Fine Arts since 1990. In 1991 she was invited by the Cultural Society of Hydra to organise a children’s painting workshop on the island, where she taught for four years. She has also practised political caricature and the design and printing of lithographs.
She has presented her work in solo exhibitions and has participated in group shows in Greece and abroad. Works of hers are in the Cycladic Gallery of Syros, the Ionian Bank, the Ministry of Culture, The “Techne” Macedonian Artistic Society, etc.