Yannis Parmakelis was born in Heraklion, Crete in 1932 and studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts on a state scholarship with Yannis Moralis and Yannis Pappas. He continued his studies at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he studied with Ossip Zadkine and Robert Couturier. He later taught sculpture at the ASFA as Yannis Pappas’ assistant and drawing at the Doxiadis Technology Institute and the Vakalo School of Art and Design.
With his morphologically diverse oeuvre, Parmakelis imbued a new dimension to the dynamism of contemporary Greek sculpture. His conceptual quests are reflected in the formation and reformation of form over at least three periods. From the beginning of the 1960s he moulded the human figure defining it on the basis of realistic surface detail. Working in bronze, he created thematic cycles with elements of a neoromantic, classicistic approach. Seated Figure is characteristic of the concentrated, transformative, expressive activity of the period. The female figure stands leaning on a pedestal but at the same time appears to be hovering in undefined, universal space-time. The outline of the figure seems rich and expressive despite the immobile and pensive stance of repose. The glance is introvert, imbuing the form with metaphysical, spiritual strength. The enigmatic figure combines representational sculpture with expressionistic characteristics, intense abstraction and surrealist parameters. The bronze defines the intensity of the form which, thanks to the “random”, hard, expressive marks, gains monumental substance.
From the mid-1970s his work sought to come into direct conversation with the surrounding space. Especially after 1978, the element of industrial abstraction and the sense of the mechanical processing of matter defined his sculptural stance and position.
.
