Description
Constantinos Dimitriadis (1881-1943) – Bronze sculpture “Female Torso” (1924).
Weight: 15.350 gr. Dimensions: 54.0 X 20.0 X 16.0 cm.
Biography:
Konstantinos Th. Dimitriadis (Stenimachos of Eastern Romilia, 1881 – Athens, October 28, 1943) was a Greek sculptor, academic and Olympian.
He studied sculpture at the Athens School of Arts (the later Academy of Fine Arts) with George Vroutos as his teacher.
In 1903 Constantinos Dimitriadis received the Averofio scholarship to continue his studies in Munich. The following year, he moved to Paris, where he studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and the École des Beaux-Arts.
In 1905 Dimitriadis opened his own workshop in Paris, while later he opened a second workshop in London.
Constantinos Dimitriadis married for the first time in a civil marriage the Frenchwoman Angele Monteil in 1908, but this marriage ended in divorce in 1927. In 1928 he married in Paris, in an Orthodox marriage, Sonia D. Marietti.
Constantinos Dimitriadis participated in the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris, not in an athletic event but in sculpture, since the program of the games also included artistic competitions. His play Discobole Finlandais won the gold medal. This work is currently in New York, while a copy of it is in Athens, opposite the Panathenaic Stadium.
In 1930 Constantinos Dimitriadis returned to Athens and, with the intervention of Eleftherios Venizelos, was appointed the first director of the School of Fine Arts and professor of sculpture, a position he held until his death. The establishment of the first branches of the School in Delphi, Hydra and Mykonos is due to him, while on his own initiative the Greek participation in the 20th Venice Biennale took place in 1936.
Constantinos Dimitriadis also collaborated with the artists Fokionas Rock and Thomas Thomopoulos for the monument to the Unknown Soldier in Athens’ Syntagma Square (1932). In 1936 he was elected a regular member of the Academy of Athens and in 1937 he was honored with the National Excellence of Letters and Arts. In 1938 he participated in the Panhellenic Exhibition.
The busts and other public monuments created by Dimitriadis are characterized as realistic works and do not differ significantly from other works of his time. However, the rest of Dimitriadis’ private work is heavily influenced by the work of the French sculptor Auguste Rodin in terms of the choice and rendering of his subjects.
In his private work, Dimitriadis emphasized movement and the momentary and elaborated the human anatomy to the point of making it an allegorical symbol in Rodin’s style. Such works of his were The Vanquished of Life (1905–1914), a multifaceted pictorial composition with twelve scenes that the sculptor did not complete due to the declaration of World War I, the Female Torso (1920, National Gallery, project 505) and the Dancer ( 1920, National Gallery, work 1888).
Constantinos Dimitriadis (1881-1943) – Bronze sculpture “Female Torso” (1924) – An exceptional and collectible sculpture.
Code: E873
