Vlavianos, passado e presente / Vlavianos, past and present
Paris 1956 -1961
Vlavianos e Paniaras / Vlavianos and Paniaras
Os anos 60: Vlavianos / The sixties: Vlavianos
Vlavianos, escultor / Vlavianos, sculptor
Os anos 70: Depoimento / The seventies: A statement
Entrevista com Vlavianos / Interview with Vlavianos
Os anos 90 / The nineties
Os anos 80 / The eighties
Nicolas Vlavianos
O "essencialismo" de Vlavianos / The "essentialism" of Vlavianos
Atenas, Paris, São Paulo, Nova York / Athens, Paris, Sao Paulo, New York
Um projeto heraclitiano de vida e obra / An Heraclitean life and work project


V l a v i a n o s                                                                          Aracy Amaral
São Paulo, 1962

Enormous constructed masses, full of architectural solidity, compact, positioned in blocks (like walls, buildings etc.) constitute the very basis of one of

Vlavianos’ sculptures. Here is an artist who brings with him, and densely infiltrated in his work, the architecture of his home land — Greece.

His arrival in Brazil seems, however, to have renovated his ways, opening spaces in his most recent sculpture with a nervous rhythm — stressed, for example, in the rhythmic successions of lined up nails — making them become more agile in the flexibility of the great blocks which are the base for each piece of work. The hollow spaces appear, revealing distant backgrounds, with fine fissures between the long nails with pieces of iron.

The impressiveness of Vlavianos’ constructions, in this manner, gains revitalizing sap (in this work which is above any kind of classification but that could be termed if one so wished: "unique sculpture", "picture-sculpture" or "anti-sculpture" — what does it matter?). This is a new dimension for the artist, which has emerged perhaps by being far away from any contact with the over-powering artistic world of Paris and by his arrival in Brazil.

And his dislocated forms, surmounted, move in far more visible welding, where the tranquil limits of the composition that he brought from Europe are disappearing. The aggressive sharp ends appear in multiple directions in a diversification of movement.

But Vlavianos is always faithful to the foundation, the earth is there as a base for the construction. The more their language is vital and strong — just like the rustic expressiveness of the selected materials — the more their lines inexorably tend towards the soil. And the movement of the nails in welded series, and of the ascending masses after the evolutionary expansion full of vigour, here it closes in on itself as if humbly accepting and rudely bringing the natural cycle to an end.

Suggestions of foretelling birds, animals, fluid marine forms — all constitute some of Vlavianos’ constant themes, who represents, here in our midst, the youngest generation of Greek sculpture.

Aracy Amaral
São Paulo, 1962