The Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation (New York) has been awarding prizes to outstanding visual artists since 1976. These awards are intended to recognize the talent of artists around the world who have a long career in art and hope to ease some of their financial burdens so that they can devote more time and energy to their creative endeavors.

Among the artists who received the Foundation’s award this year was the Greek artist Hélène Pavlopoùlou with her work Voltaire and Assange in an Arcadian Forest, 2022.

Hélène Pavlopoùlou studied painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts. Her work is in many public and private collections and has been shown in 14 solo exhibitions, as well as in art fairs and biennials worldwide. She collaborates with the State Museums of Contemporary Art of Greece (MOMus) in Thessaloniki on international exhibitions. Last year, Pavlopoùlou had an artist residency at the Schütz Museum in Austria which will result in a future solo show. She is represented in Greece by Alexandros Donopoulos International Fine Arts. She is working on a new project for a 2023/24 exhibition in Naples, Italy.

The painter herself notes about her work: “My work takes an allegorical, philosophical, and poetic approach to the theme of nature. I was initially influenced by the Greek Islands as symbols and metaphors of the mystical heritage of the Aegean Sea. Other paintings revolve around vessels and boats to represent the archetypal and mythical meaning of sea travel as a way of transporting human dreams and transforming life. Another recurring subject is the horse, often in combination with fragments of other subjects, including broken statues or figures of mystery or paradox. Surrealism is always a good way to explore the unconscious and to represent new images of contemporary life. Horses are archetypes of the psyche, the soul. My new project combines these various themes. Now nature is a spiritual blue and trees and forests form the background, the theatrical scene of the players. There are also references to the universe: Earth is reflected in the cosmic order, underlining the human responsibility to historical memory.”