Bust of Evangelos Averoff-Tossizza

The artistic oeuvre of Costi Papachristopoulos was strongly influenced by the post-Rodin models which he was taught during his time in Paris in the 1920s, where, after completing his studies at the School of Fine Arts in Athens (1920 - 1925) with T... Thomopoulos, he continued his apprenticeship at the Académie Julian and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, with the great sculptor Antoine Bourdelle as his teacher. In 1938 he travelled to Rome in order to specialise in the technique of bronze-casting at the foundry of San Michele in Trastevere, where he acquired an expert knowledge of the poured wax method. His stay in Italy brought him into contact with Renaissance art and Mannerism, which from then on were discreet but fundamental characteristics of his sculptures. He settled permanently in Paris in 1945, where he produced busts of many personalities in French and Greek society. The woman's silhouette and the rendering of her nude body were the things which magnetised the sculptor and which predominate in his work. His attention turned more to the poses of the figures than to the subjective features of each woman, as is confirmed by the series of five sculptures in the Evangelos Averoff Gallery.