Stassinopoulou Aspa (1935)

She was born in Athens in 1935. She studied painting at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris (1959-1963). There she met Yiannis Tsarouchis, with whom she became friends and collaborators. She returned briefly to Greece and presented her first solo exhibition in 1966 (Astor gallery, Athens). Soon she left again for Paris (1968), disillusioned by the political and social developments in Greece after the rise of the junta. In 1969, she moved to London, where she worked until 1974.
At first she engaged in painting, but soon she introduced in her work mixed materials, ready-made objects, processed photographic prints, super-8 films and other expressive media, following from early-on the avant-garde trends of the 1970’s. Her oeuvre includes mainly constructions and in situ installations with miscellaneous materials, as well as artistic actions. Overall, her work constitutes one of the earliest appearances of such art forms in Greece. Her themes initiate from a critical view of the sociopolitical reality, based on the documentation of day-to-day events, in an often subversive or denunciatory vein. In her more recent periods, she draws inspiration from monumental statues of Greek archaic art, which she integrates in artistic actions, rendering their presence in unconventional ways. Her works, despite their complex artistic and conceptual processing, they function on a rather emotional than mental level, due to the expressive immediacy that characterizes them.
Since youth, she participated in activities of artistic groups (the Centre for Visual Arts, Art Group 4+, the Group for Communication and Education in Art), that among other things, expressed her ideological objections for the commercialization of art and the galleries system.
She has presented her work in a limited number of solo exhibitions, mainly in Athens, but also in Amsterdam and London. In 2009 a retrospective exhibition was organized at the Benaki Museum in Athens, for which she was awarded the grand, off-competition, prize of AICA Hellas. She also participated in important group exhibitions and international events in Greece and abroad: Environment-Action, Athens, 1981; Biennale Sao Paulo, 1985; Three Generations of Greek Women Artists, National Museum of Women Artists, Washington, 1989; Metamorphoses of the Modern, National Gallery of Athens, 1992; 4th Athens Biennale, 2013 et al.