Description
Camillos Kouros Gallery, New York, Published 1984. Wraps, 20 pp.; 27 cm; staple bound; illustrated with twelve black-and-white plates of Lekakis wood sculptures with titles, dates, materials, and heights.
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Catalog notes
Condition & notes
In Very Good condition. Cream paper wraps with the artist's Greek monogram printed at center of front cover. Light bumping to edges and corners and mild shelf wear; faint surface soiling and scattered light foxing visible on both covers. Staple binding tight. Interior pages unmarked.Exhibition catalog for the Michael Lekakis retrospective held at Camillos Kouros Gallery, 831 Madison Avenue, New York, in December 1984. The exhibition was presented under the auspices of the Greek Consulate General in New York as part of the "Contributors to American Culture" series, with an introduction by Consul General Nicolas A. Capellaris framing the project as institutional recognition of modern Greek artists' place in American culture. The biographical essay is by Dore Ashton (reprinted from Arts Magazine), the American art critic and Cooper Union professor best known for her biographies of Philip Guston and Mark Rothko. Ashton positions Lekakis as a serious modern carver of wood drawing together Klee's cosmic principle, Plato's metaphysics, Hölderlin's romance with ancient Greece, and the artist's own statements about reconciling man and the cosmos through eros and agape. The text records Lekakis's personal connections with Ezra Pound, whose Homeric obsession Lekakis cherished, and with e.e. cummings, who called him "a singularly honest Greek sculptor."Twelve plates document major Lekakis sculptures in oak, elm, walnut, mahogany, rosewood, and pearwood, including Astrape (1953-65, 93 inches), Keravnos (1948, 49 inches), Trocheion (1955-59, 66 inches), Apotheosis No. 1 (1962-67, 45 1/2 inches), Trimanton (1973-83, 76 inches), Rhythmisis (1951-66, 63 1/2 inches), Trisipostaton (1947-65, 76 inches), and Thunderbird (1946-55, 56 inches). The catalog closes with lists of selected exhibitions (including a Whitney solo show in 1973-74 and group inclusion in MoMA's Americans 1963) and selected public collections (MoMA, Solomon R. Guggenheim, Whitney, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Wadsworth Atheneum, Tel-Aviv Museum, and the National Pinacotheque of Athens, among others).