Michael Michaeledes, the early period

The Leventis Municipal Museum of Nicosia hosts the exhibition of the artist Michael Michaeledes titled “Michael Michaeledes, the early period – notes for a continuity”, at the House of Educational Programmes of the Museum.

Michael Michaeledes was born in Cairo, in 1927. He studied Architecture and Fine Arts in Italy and the U.K.. Since 1955 he is based in London, where he has worked as an architect and as a visual artist. His early paintings, done before he moved to the U.K., are representational and related to the ethograpical world of Cyprus. Representation is gradually abandoned, through abstraction, while being replaced by chromatic, geometric and graphic syntheses, which from 1965 and on lead to the relief geometric and rhythmical sculptural works, where the alternations and the poetics of light are dominant.

Since 1968 he is represented by London’s “Annely Juda Fine Art” gallery. Earlier, works of his were shown at a solo show and a group exhibition at Hamilton gallery, managed by Annely Juda. In 1976 he represented Greece at the Venice Biennale. He has exhibited in over 40 solo shows (the first one in 1959, and the most recent one in 2006) and he has participated in over 80 group shows in London, Belfast, Bristol, Dublin, Oxford, Rome, Milano, Turin, Paris, Zurich, Amsterdam, Salzburg, Athens, Thessaloniki and Rethymnon, Greece.

Works of his belong to the Municipal Gallery, Dublin, The Arts Council of Great Britain, London, the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Caracas, the Museo de Solidaridad, Santiago, the National Museum of Modern Art, Seoul, The McCrory Corporation, New York, The I.T.M. Corporation, London and New York, the Lafcadio Hearn Foundation, Matsue, Japan. In Greece, works of his belong to the National Gallery, the Sculpture Gallery of Athens, the Prodromos Emfietzoglou Collection, the American College, Athens, and the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art of Thessaloniki. In Cyprus, works of his can be found at the State Gallery of Contemporary Cypriot Art and at the A.G. Leventis Foundation. Finally, his works belong to private collections.

He has designed buildings, residencies, stables, farms and boats in various locations around the world (Warehouse, London, Rothschild mansion, Corfu, Zambia, Japan and elsewhere) and he has received numerous awards for his artistic oeuvre (Europe Prize for Painting, Ostend, Belgium, “Pablo Neruda” distinction, Chile). He has also received the Philadelphian Pan-Hellenic Poetry Award for his poetic oeuvre during his youth.

Opening: Tuesday 23 November 2010 at 19:30. The exhibition will be on until 30 January 2011