Rinos Stefani

Gallery Kypriaki Gonia hosts an important exhibition of Rinos Stefani from 8 to 23 of March 2010. Some of the artist’s work that is expected to be shown is the Acrobats, Dancers and Lovers.

President, Rotary Club of Larnaca Mr. Sozos-Christos Theodoulou will open the exhibition on Monday 8th March at 6.30 p.m.

The Lecturer of Art History and Theory at the Cyprus University of Technology Dr Antonis Danos in the book “Rinos Stefani - Acrobats” writes:

“…in a hieratic attitude of supreme elegance”. Lovers, acrobats, wayfarers and dancers: the human condition in the mythology of Rinos Stefani’s painting.

Stefani’s painting oeuvre essentially begins in the early years of the 1980s…

His work is characterized by a consistent expressionism, manifesting itself in the freedom, both in the application of paint on the picture’s surface, and of the design, as well as, in the seemingly naοve quality of the portrayed subjects. This last element betrays influences from various areas in international representational painting: from European Art Brut, from the years following the Second World War, to German neo-expressionism in the 1980s, as well as from Italian Transavanguardia in the same decade, combined with references to “primitive” art.

On another level, the sensuality in Stefani’s work concerns its subject matter. On one hand, it emanates from the eroticism and sexuality of the several “Erotic” pictures. It is always a direct, “natural” sexuality, a “primitive” and, therefore, “pure” eroticism. On the other hand, the sensual element is also contained in the non-apparently erotic or sexual images: the ever-present nudity of the figures presents the human being in its most basic (“natural”) state, stripped of layers of cultural accretions and conventions...

The naked human figure becomes the symbol and the bearer of the (pan)human condition.

Images of a world that is at once familiar and strange or estranged. Like scenes from a play of the theatre of the absurd – the familiar and intimate loom unfamiliar and otherworldly – just as absurd are often the paintings’ titles. Images, which refer to the primordial, the primitive, the essential…”

Rinos Stefani studied at the Byam Shaw School of Art in London and did his postgraduate studies in Berlin and Barcelona. He lives and works in his native village Tala, Paphos.

Rinos Stefani was born in 1958 in Tala Paphos. He studied art in London, at Kingsway College (1978 - 1980) and at Byam Shaw School of Art (1980 - 84). In 1983 he won the Granham Hamilton Prize- best graduate work- for the painting Uprooting He has lived in Berlin (1985 - 86), and in Barcelona and London (1988 - 89) In 1990 he embarked on his Praxeis (actions, happenings and installations) with Suzan Vargas. In 1991 he founded the kathodos Group with Suzan Vargas and other artists. In 1995 he was awarded the 2nd prize in the national competition for a monument at Ledra Street in Nicosia. In the same year, a documentary film about his work was made. In 1996 he won the 1st prize in an art competition organized by the British Council and the Municipality of Nicosia. Between 2000 and 2006, he served as a member on the Board of the Cyprus Chamber of Fine Arts E.KA.TE. Since 1989, he teaches art in public school.

Opening Hours
10:00 - 13:00 & 16:30 - 20:00