(b Batum, USSR [now Batumi, Georgia], 26 Sept 1922). Austrian sculptor of Greek descent. He was the son of Greek parents and grew up in Batum, where he studied at the Staatliche Kunstschule (1937–9). From 1939 to 1943 he was in Athens and in 1943 settled in Vienna. From 1945 to 1949 he studied painting at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna with Robin Andersen. From 1953 to 1956 he studied sculpture with Fritz Wotruba. The starting-point of all Avramidis’s sculptures was the human body, reduced to the simplest possible elements of a column and sphere. The archaic character, influenced principally by ancient Greek sculpture, merged with the notion of absolute beauty, which manifests itself in forms of perfect rotundity, for example Head II (bronze, h. 270 mm, 1965; Hamburg, Gal. Elke Dröscher). Whilst dispensing with individual details, he created bodies of immaculately tranquil harmony, their shape characterized by the interaction between individual parts and an imposingly dominant monumental whole. These often took the form of clusters of columnar forms suggesting intimate crowds of figures. From 1965 Avramidis held posts at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste. In the 1980s the figural elements of his work became more pronounced, being marked by segmentary lines (e.g. Sitting Figure 1, bronze, h. 1.22 m, 1983; see 1988 exh. cat.). Apart from numerous one-man exhibitions, Avramidis participated in major international exhibitions.

• Avramidis, Joannis
  • Austria, §IV, 5: Sculpture, after c 1900: Modern developments