| Danseuse
Espagnole - a bronze sculpture by Sophia Vari and a striking addition to
WSU's highly regarded outdoor sculpture collection. Vari has an international reputation in sculpture with public sculptures installed in Fundacae Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon, Portugal; the Musee de la Main in Lausanne, Switzerland; The National Pinacoteca in Athens; the Foundation Vernneman in Belgium; and the Hakone Open Air Museum in Japan. She was born in Athens, Greece, and spent her childhood in England, Switzerland, and France. At the age of 11, Vari returned to Greece and continued her schooling there. She pursued a career in art by studying at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, beginning first as a Painter before eventually gravitating toward sculpture. |
Danseuse Espagnole
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 Sophia Vari |
Early in her career, Vari's work featured literal figurative
pieces; she then moved toward the kind of abstraction which has more figurative
references, such as Danseuse Espagnole. Vari explains, "My
intention is to take geometry, volume, shapes and humanize them in space." The vertical forms in Danseuse Espagnole resemble legs and the soft curving lines on the top of the sculpture define a figurative head and torso. The inclined head shows enormous control and celebrates the culmination of the form. The strident step or the legs provides a sense of fluid movement. The sculpture has a rich patina, with a deep green and black mottled pattern.
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| Vari's undulating sculptures possess an
equilibrium between movement and stillness, and their lustrous surfaces welcome the touch
of the viewer. Her sculptures are sensual and curvaceous in form, and seem to exert a
physical magnetism. Danseuse Espagnole is, in fact, both physical
and psychological. It combines geometry and essence in its manipulation of shapes and
forms, thus creating powerful and magnetic images. By rendering her abstractions more
structural, Vari has been able to define space, movement, and shape into a cohesive whole
form which radiates life, humanism and history. The evolution of Vari's attitude to abstraction has led her to integrate that enigmatic sensuousness always prevalent in her work with geometry. Having conquered the structural aspects of geometry, she now searches, with great conviction, to deepen the humanization of the geometrical. "My intent is to take geometry, volume, shapes, and humanize them in space" states Vari. Through geometry she reduces human forms to archetypal shapes, restructuring and rebalancing the essence of life, thus giving the sculpture an agile and dynamic new definition. But Vari's work is not only about structure. It is about life. It is about a fusion of two dynamics: the material and the spiritual, the body and the soul. It is about a combination of all the elements that create life. It is about being. Through Fragmentation and refabrication a new whole appears where the being has been shattered and each segment clinically studied, analyzed, and recomposed into a new order where each part has a new role, thus creating a stronger, affirmative whole. The power of the work of Sophia Vari lies in her ability to reach a gestural geometric abstraction that transcends from mere form into spirit. Vari's naming process for her sculptures usually relate to the moment they were made or to an event in her life, more than to the sculpture itself. However, Danseuse Espagnole bears that name because Vari considers it an "exercise in motion." Danseuse Espagnole was originally brought to Wichita State University on loan from the artist and exhibited on the Kouri Sculpture Terrace of the Edwin A. Ulrich Museum of Art. During the selection process for artwork to be placed in the Plaza of Heroines, the sculpture team, chaired by Joan Beren, admired the piece. Soon after, the process began to add Danseuse Espagnole to WSU's acclaimed sculpture collection and install it permanently in the Plaza of Heroines.
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