Chicago Chinatown, 1990
Light installation
Metal with yellow, red, and blue neon
Jazz I
Plexiglas, paint
Jazz IΙ
Plexiglas, paint
Gate 4, 1996
Plexiglas
[Untitled], 1993-96
Wood, plexiglas, paint
[Untitled], 1993-96
Wood, plexiglas, paint
ΕΜΣΤ Collection
Bequest of Chryssa 2015
Chryssa Vardea-Mavromichali was one of the most prominent figures of the Greek diaspora, active in the United States during the postwar period and gaining international recognition already from the 1960s onward. A pioneer in the use of new technologies, she introduced neon as a primary sculptural material, exploring its expressive and spatial potential in a radical way. Developing a visual language that bridged pop art, conceptual art, and minimalism, Chryssa was one of the few women of her generation to create large-scale installations and sculptures with industrial materials, challenging a patriarchal field of artistic practice shaped by notions of scale, matter, and sculptural power. Her work explores the intersection of language, light, and urban space, transforming the city’s visual elements into fields of critical and artistic inquiry and experimentation. Having emigrated to New York in the mid-1950s, Chryssa focused her research on writing and on new codes of communication emerging within her contemporary urban environment, primarily through the sculptural use of neon. From the late 1970s, and especially from the early 1980s, she turned her attention to Chinese calligraphy, which she encountered through her frequent visits to New York’s Chinatown. In this context, she created numerous wall-mounted works, prints, and neon installations—such as the one currently on show—drawing inspiration from Chinese ideograms and the ways they permeate and reshape the urban fabric.
Moreover, the maquettes presented here serve as proposals for large-scale sculptures, designed either for indoor settings or for outdoor public spaces. A central formal element is the arch, which often appears inverted, creating dynamic compositions in multiple variations. In this series of maquettes, collectively titled Jazz, Chryssa drew on newspaper typography, enlarging and isolating typographic elements from their original context and transforming them into autonomous formal structures. Through enlargement, the letters are stripped of their quality as linguistic signifiers and acquire a new material and sculptural presence. The maquettes display formal affinities with her monumental, iconic work The Gates to Times Square (1964–66)—inspired by the eponymous New York square—through which Chryssa sought to capture the phantasmagorical atmosphere of the metropolis.
Chryssa Vardea-Mavromichali was born in Athens in 1928. She died in Athens in 2013.
