Strusa Efi (1941 - 2019)

Born in 1941 in Kerkyra, she studied History of Art, History of Art Criticism and Museuology at London's Courtauld Institute of Art (B.A. 1969, M.A. 1971) and at the Istituto di Storia dell’ Arte of the University of Rome (1973-1976).
She spent the years 1972-1983 in Rome, working for the research projects of Italy's Gabinetto Fotografico Nazionale del Patrimonio Culturale.
Her ceaseless and multifaceted activity focused mainly on promoting contemporary Greek art internationally and on the institutional interconnection of the Greek art with the international arena. Between 1977 and 2018 she organised and curated many solo and group exhibitions in Greece and abroad, in collaboration with public and private institutions—indicatively: Mito e Realta, Artisti Greci Contemporanei/Expo Arte, Fiera Internazionale di Arte Contemporanea, Expo-Arte Bari 1977; Avanguardia e Sperimentazione 1978, Punti Interrogativi-Punti di Riferimento, (1978 Galleria Civica-Modena & 1978 Magazzini del Sale-Venice); Emerging Images (I.C.C.-Europalia Hellas ’82, Antwerp); 7 Greek Artists: A New Journey (1983 Famagusta Gate, Nicosia); Sanat, Art (1992, Museum of Sculpture & Painting, Istanbul), etc.
In 1997 she was the Greek Commissioner for the 47th Biennale of Venice, when the Greek delegation with Alexandros Psychoulis won the Benesse Award for the first time, and in 2002 she was the commissioner for the Sao Paolo Biennale.
Hundreds of theoretical and critical texts on the history of recent and modern art were published from 1976 to 2018 in exhibition catalogues, art magazines and the daily press in Greece and abroad as well as in conference proceedings. She also wrote entries on contemporary Greek art for the Encyclopaedia Treccani, Grecia, Arte 1970-1990 (Italy) and the Dictionary of Greek Artists (Athens: Melissa 1993-1997). She drafted also monographs for Greek and foreign artists and edited the catalogue of the Emfietzoglou Collection (1998, 2005), etc.
She taught Art History at the School of Fine Arts of the University of Crete (1999-2002), and gave numerous lectures on art history and theory in Greece and abroad.
A founding member of the DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art, she sat on the Board and was its director in 1983-1989. In 1992 she proposed and coordinated an international network of cultural sites in Greece, in collaboration with local cultural institutions and the Municipality of Rhodes, under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture and the Dodecanese Prefecture. In 1996-1997 she joined the Ministry of Culture's task force in charge of drafting the national policy on visual art.
A member of the Greek section of AICA, she was its president in 2001-2009 and a vice-president of AICA International (2004-2007). She was also a member of the Advisory Committee of the Forum for European Cultural Exchanges (Thessaloniki, 2003-2008), and a trustee of the National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST; 2014-2018).
She died in Athens in January 2019.