Giorgos Zongolopoulos

Giorgos Zongolopoulos, also known internationally as George or Georgios Zongolopoulos, was born in Athens in 1903. He studied sculpture at the Athens School of Fine Arts from 1924 to 1930, with Thomas Thomopoulos. He then worked in the Ministry of Education’s architectural department, planning schools and other buildings. Architecture helped make the relationship between an artwork and its setting a continuing concern.

In 1936 he married the painter Eleni Paschalidou-Zongolopoulou, with whom he shared a long artistic life and studios in Greece and Paris. A French government scholarship took him to Marcel Gimond’s Paris studio in 1949. Further study in Italy in the early 1950s deepened his knowledge of bronze casting and historical sculpture. International exhibitions introduced his changing work to audiences beyond Greece.

He gradually moved from recognisable human figures towards more simplified, abstract constructions. Metal, empty space, water and movement expanded what a sculpture could be. Public commissions brought this exploration into places people pass through daily. In 2004 he established his Foundation and died that same year. The Foundation preserves both artists’ work in their former home and studio in Psychiko, Athens, and documents the drawings, models and practical decisions behind his public sculptures.

The bronze portrait Ο ζωγράφος Μίμης Βιτσώρης (The Painter Mimis Vitsoris, 1934), held by the National Gallery, records his early attention to the human face. The Μνημείο Ζαλόγγου (Zalongo Monument), unveiled in 1961, commemorates the women of Souli through linked, simplified figures in white stone. Its scale and outline were conceived in relation to the mountain landscape, in collaboration with architect Patroklos Karantinos.

His Γλυπτό ΔΕΘ (Thessaloniki International Fair Sculpture, 1966) brings abstract metal forms into an urban setting. In Ομπρέλες (Umbrellas), the familiar canopy becomes a framework rather than a shelter from rain. The waterfront installation of 1997 lets viewers look through its lines towards the sea and sky. Changes of light and viewpoint alter the relationship between the sculpture and its surroundings.

Elsewhere, water produces actual movement: the hydrokinetic Πεντάκυκλο (Five Circles, 2001), installed in Athens’s Omonia Square, uses water to move its metal circles. His museum Umbrellas installation also explored water-driven motion. These works show why material, mechanism and location need to be considered together. A public sculpture can organise a view, cast a shadow or introduce a changing rhythm into a familiar route through the city.

Open the Foundation’s historical page ΟΜΠΡΕΛΕΣ, 12.01.1997 (Umbrellas, 12 January 1997) and look at its waterfront photograph. Describe three things with μπροστά, πίσω and ανάμεσα: what is in front, behind or between the metal forms? Write what is visible from that viewpoint, including a shadow if you can see one.

Then change μία ψηλή ομπρέλα into πολλές ψηλές ομπρέλες, noticing how the adjective follows the noun into the plural. The adapted Greek passage gives a model. This small exercise connects everyday vocabulary with Zongolopoulos’s concern for open space: the gaps between forms and the sea behind them become as useful to describe as the metal itself.

• He designed schools before concentrating on sculpture.
• The 1961 date for the Zalongo Monument marks its unveiling; construction took place in 1954–1960.
• His Foundation preserves the work of both Zongolopoulos and painter Eleni Paschalidou-Zongolopoulou.