Drawing from European Greco-Latin and Christian sources, this piece by Anna Chromý is imbued with a quest to find the Old Continent’s artistic roots. The exhibition “Mythos revisited”, displayed at the National Museum of Archaeology in Athens in 2017, was a retelling of the myths of Ancient Greece t...
Drawing from European Greco-Latin and Christian sources, this piece by Anna Chromý is imbued with a quest to find the Old Continent’s artistic roots. The exhibition “Mythos revisited”, displayed at the National Museum of Archaeology in Athens in 2017, was a retelling of the myths of Ancient Greece through a series of sculptures depicting Ulysses, Prometheus, Sisyphus, Gaia, Eurydice, and Europa. Ulysses is represented at the helm of his ship, in a precarious situation, grappling with fate. He symbolises the human condition. The sailor commands the rudder of his own existence, but must contend with higher forces that blind him at times, guide him at others. The hero’s epic voyage as told in Homer’s Odyssey also symbolises the artist’s own condition. After negotiating a series of trials, the traveller’s voyage ends with the return to home port, the spiritual home, the font of original knowledge.
Anna Chromý was born on 18 July 1940 in Krumau, in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. At the end of the Second World War, Anna Chromý’s family left Bohemia for Vienna and Salzburg in Austria. After marrying and moving to Paris, Anna studied painting at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts where she rapidly built a reputation for her surrealist visions. An accident in 1992 meant that she was unable to paint for a long time, and so she turned to sculpture using bronze and marble. Based in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, she found inspiration and materials in Italy, from the quarries in Carrara and Pietrasanta. Her large-scale sculptures have been installed at many outstanding locations in Europe and China.
