Froso Efthimiadi-Menegaki receives an award at the Sao Paulo Biennale

In 1959, at the fifth Sao Paulo Biennale, the promotion of abstract art set the tone. Greece was represented, among others, by the painter Eleni Stathopoulou, the engraver Costas Grammatopoulos, the sculptors Klearchos Loukopoulos and Froso Efthimiadi-Menegaki. The latter was awarded the “Medalla de Honor” for her piece Bird. "The "Bird" is a sculpture of significant value... These three arches with their differentiated elliptical orbits, which hold the work together, are a "spatial" composition, of the being suspended in space, that deserves to claim one of the top spots in modern sculpture," Juan Zocchi, director of the Buenos Aires Museum of Fine Arts, wrote at the time.

Efthimiadi-Menegaki was born in Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) in 1916, studied ceramics at the Vienna School of Applied Arts (1930-1933) and sculpture with Marcel Zimon in Paris in 1945-1946. Between 1947-1949 she lived in Argentina, while between 1953 and 1967, she traveled to countries in Africa and Asia, studying their art. Although in her early work she used mainly clay in depicting animals, from 1955 onwards, she worked with metal, creating abstract compositions and emphasizing on the concept of movement. She died in Athens in 1995 and bestowed her entire work to the National Gallery.