Costas Coulentianos
(b. Athens, Greece, 1918, d. Arles, France, 1995)
Costas Coulentianos studied at The School of Fine Art, Athens between 1936 and 1939, and later in Paris at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière with a grant from The French government under Ossip Zadkine. His abstract sculptures, usually rendered in bronze or iron, often draw inspiration from nature or the human form. From the early 1960s, the artist’s work became steadily more abstract and an interest in how flat planes can describe volumetric space became the focus of his body of work.
His work was exhibited in the 1953 Antwerp Biennale, the 1955 São Paulo Biennale, the 1964 Venice Biennale and has been the subject of over 30 solo exhibitions worldwide. In 1984, he was bestowed the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government. Retrospective exhibitions of Coulentianos work have been organized at the Couvent des Cordeliers (1997) in Paris, the Musée Chintreuil (2002) in Pont-de-Vaux, the Medusa Art Gallery (2008) in Athens, the Florina Museum of Modern Art (2008), the Benaki Museum in Athens and the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art (2012 – 2013) in Thessaloniki.
Coulentianos lived in Arles, France until his death in 1995.
