Marking the tenth anniversary of his untimely death and as part of the re-hang of its collection, EMΣT presents a SPOTLIGHT on George Lappas (1950–2016), featuring works from the museum’s collection as well as selected loans. Lappas was one of the most important contemporary Greek artists of his generation, making a decisive contribution to sculpture and conceptual art in Greece.
The artists radically redefined sculpture in Greece. He played a key role in shifting the field away from traditional representation toward more contemporary, conceptual, and multilayered forms of expression, connecting the Greek art scene with international developments in contemporary art.
Lappas’ multifaceted body of work is defined by a sustained investigation of sculptural form as a kind of three-dimensional drawing in space. It investigates the threshold between two- and three-dimensionality, as well as the shifting relationship between architectural and illusory space, through a research-driven, experimental practice that spanned sculpture, photography, movement, light, and scale. Drawing on cross-cultural references that ranged from ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Mayan art to 20th-century art history, and key moments in recent political and social history, his work unfolds in a liminal field between opposing registers: the personal and the collective, the private and the public, the artwork and the viewer, the local and the global, East and West.
The exhibition is held as part of EMΣT’s Spotlight program, which aims to present artists from the collection in greater depth, offering the public the opportunity to delve deeper into their work. The exhibition features works from the EMΣT Collection, alongside additional loans that encapsulate some of the central questions underpinning his entire artistic career.
Curated by Daphne Vitali
BIOGRAPHY
George Lappas was born in Egypt in 1950 and moved with his family to Greece in 1958, following Gamal Abdel Nasser’s policicy of nationalisation and state reforms, which significantly curtailed the status and rights of many foreign and minority communities in Egypt. Between 1969 and 1973, he studied clinical psychology at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, and subsequently volunteered as a researcher in psychiatric clinics in Salem, San Francisco, and San Diego.
In 1974, he received a Watson Foundation fellowship and travelled to India to study Indian sculpture and architecture, followed by travels to Iran and Afghanistan. In 1975, he studied for a year at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London and travelled to Italy. Between 1976 and 1981, he studied sculpture at the Athens School of Fine Arts under Professors Yannis Pappas and George Nikolaidis. He continued his sculptural studies at the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris on a French state scholarship (1984–1985). From 1995 onwards, he travelled and worked in the UK, the USA, and Japan. In 1992, he was elected Professor at the Athens School of Fine Arts, where he taught sculpture until his death in 2016. Lappas established a significant international presence, becoming one of Greece’s most prominent contemporary artists of his generation.
He held numerous solo exhibitions in galleries and museums, including: Tramway, Glasgow, Benaki Museum, Athens, Zoumboulakis Gallery Bernier/Eliades Gallery, Citrone Gallery, Athens, Galerie Albert Baronian, Brussels, Lehman-Maupin Gallery, New York, Xippas Gallery, Paris. He also participated in important international exhibitions and biennials, such as the Biennale des Jeunes Artistes (1982), the São Paulo Biennial (1987), the Venice Biennale (1988 & 1990), the Gwangju Biennale (1995) and Documenta 14 (2017), as well as major group exhibitions such as Metropolis at Martin Gropius Bau (1991) and Everything that’s interesting is New at the DESTE Foundation (1996).
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