Opening: Friday 6 May 2022

  “From the first years of my life I was lucky enough to live next to the great ancestor and watch him create. This early contact with art, together with my love for beauty, was the reason for my future career.”

Katerina Halepa-Katsatou (1925-2004).

 The subject of Yiannoulis Halepas is not easily exhausted. After the major exhibition “Yiannoulis Halepas: Giving and Receiving“, a co-production with Onassis Culture and in collaboration with important museums and collectors, an attempt to take a refreshing look at the artist’s work, the theme of Halepas returns with a new exhibition at Teloglion, which complements and extends to some extent the previous one.

The exhibition “Katerina Halepa-Katsatou: in the footsteps of Giannoulis“, in collaboration with Onassis Culture, will open on Friday 6 May 2022.

Katerina Halepa-Katsatou, a sculptor, a distant nephew of Giannoulis, chose and dared to pursue sculpture, despite the weight of her great ancestor. She was a sculptor who, as was natural, was influenced by her uncle’s work, lived close to him until she was 13 and created, nevertheless, a strong body of work with large-scale sculptures in marble, in bronze, monumental compositions in public spaces and buildings, as no other woman in the field of modern Greek sculpture. Her sculpture remains generally figurative, realistic with man as its central theme. She chooses to express herself through the grand gesture, captured in large epic compositions – the pre-eminent Greek sculptor of monumental sculpture.

The exhibition will present for the first time in Greece an important Greek sculptor of monumental sculpture in historical monuments of Greece and Macedonia in particular (Naoussa Monument 1822, Monument to the Asia Minor Mother 1922 in Mytilene, etc.). More than 80 works, sculptures, drawings and rare documents about Katerina Halepa-Katsatou and Yiannoulis Halepa will be presented at Teloglion.

Katerina Halepa contributed greatly to the preservation and curation of the archive of her family, Vassilis and Irini Halepa, and she understood and made it her life’s work to preserve and archive all these elements that ultimately help to put the artistic work in its proper context. This archive contained important information about Giannoulis, his work, his drawings in the account books of his father’s business, but also about the marble sculpture workshop of his father, Ioannis Chalepas, documents, contracts, etc. and also contained rich material in photographs and documents about Tinos. Most importantly, however, Katerina preserved the sculptural set of works that Halepas made when he lived in the Dafniolis residence in Athens.

It is worth getting to know her work, and the rest of her contribution to sculpture.

“I met Katerina Halepas, now mature, in the 1980s, when she had a now well-formed path in sculpture, characterized by her efforts to preserve the heavy heritage and love for her uncle’s work. In this shadow, amidst the admiration and the inevitable influences of Chalepas, she tried to make – and made – her own work, with her own personality, her own choices”, says Alexandra Goulaki-Boutyra in the text of the publication.

Short biography

Katerina Halepa-Katsatou was born in Athens on 9 April 1925, the daughter of Vassiliou Halepa and Irini (née Iakovos Kouvaras). She is the third generation to continue the family tradition of sculptors: great-granddaughter of Yiannoulis Halepas and great-granddaughter of the marble sculptor-architect Ioannos Halepas, father of Yiannoulis. He died in Athens on 10 June 2004.

He taught drawing for four years in the private studio of the painter Loukas Geralis. He studied sculpture at the Athens School of Fine Arts, under the tutelage of the academic Michalis Tombros (1949-1954), and marble under the tutelage of the sculptor Georgios Mataragas. He received a diploma in sculpture in 1954 and a diploma in Theoretical Studies in 1956. In 1957, after completing her studies, she attended drawing classes for an additional year at the private studio of Spyros Papaloukas. Her artistic career began in 1957. In addition to sculpture, she also indulged in medal and painting. She created many works placed in public spaces in various cities of Greece, in higher State Institutions such as the Academy of Athens, the Ioannina Gallery, the Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs, and others in private collections in Greece and abroad.

Scientific curator of the exhibition and bilingual edition/catalogue: Alexandra Goulaki-Boutyra, General Director of the Telloglio Foundation for the Arts of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Professor Emeritus of the School of Fine Arts of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

Duration of the exhibition until Sunday 17 July 2022.

Opening hours of the exhibition hall: Tuesday, Thursday, Friday 9.00-14.00, Wednesday 9.00-14.00 & 17.00-21.00, Saturday and Sunday 10.00-18.00, Monday closed.

Tel. Reception of the Foundation: 2310247111.

Captions of works (from left):

Image (1) “Leda and the Swan”, 1978. Copper, 62x40x27 cm.

Image (2) Katerina Halepa in the house in Dafnimoli.

Image (3) “Asia Minor Mother“, 1984, Epano Skala Mytilini. Copper, 2,60×1,27×0,97 m.

Image (4) Katerina Halepa with her work “The Lady of the Sea”, 1970.

In collaboration with ONASSIS CULTURE