Romanos Chrysa (1931 - 2006)

She was born in Athens in 1931. She studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts under A. Georgiadis and Y. Moralis. She presented her first solo show in Athens in 1960 (Zygos). In 1961 she leaves for Paris on scholarship (State Scholarship Foundation), where she will eventually settle for 20 years, returning again to Greece in 1981.
Her early turn to abstraction revealed her tendency to disengage from the traditional forms, seeking a personal artistic idiom. At first, she explored automatic writing and gesture. While living in Paris, she had the opportunity to familiarize herself with different avant-garde expressive media, in the same line with the artists of the 60’s. Soon she began to use techniques such as photomontage and collage, using mass culture images or print media photos, often modified or fragmented, along with manuscripts, printed texts and symbols (Labyrinths, Horoscopes, Casinos, Reportages, Maps). The content of her works is intensely critical, but her expressive style is rather poetic than rational. The same applies to her three-dimensional structures (Meccano), which allude to a playful utopian architecture, and also to her latest works, in which she employs the décollage technique on plexiglass.
She presented her work in a limited number of solo exhibitions in Greece and abroad, but she participated in many group and international art shows, among which are the following: Young Artists Biennale (Paris, 1961), Engraving Biennale (Ljubljana, 1961), Sao Paulo Biennale (1965, 1994); Venice Biennale (1976 as part of the Projetto Arcevia), and Instanbul Biennale (1997), various Paris Salons (1967, 1971, 1972, 1974, 1976, 1978, 1980), Europalia (Βelgium, 1982), Transformations of Modern Art, (Athens, 1992), and many more.
She died in Athens in 2006. In 2014 Kalfayan gallery organized the tribute exhibition Chryssa + Chrysa, showcasing in tandem Chrysa Romanos and Chryssa’s (Vardea) works.