About
Electra Varnava was born on July 20, 1988 in Limassol, Cyprus. She graduated from the Department of Visual and Applied Arts of the School of Fine Arts at Thessaloniki’s Aristotle University (2006-11). She has participated in various group exhibitions, including the 15th Biennale of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean-Symbiosis. She has received various awards in art competitions at home, as well as abroad.
At the age of 10, she began to attend art lessons at a private school in Limassol. Her mother encouraged her to participate in competitions where she achieved numerous distinctions. The most significant competition during her younger years was the one organized by the Youth Board of Cyprus in 2002, where she won a trip to Rome, (at the age of only 14). This was also the first competition she had ever taken part in and the one which made her career take off. At the same young age, she won first place in the Agros Youth competition in Cyprus. In two short years (2004), she achieved another distinction in a European competition this time and then after that the first place in Limassol’s “Epilogi” Cultural Movement Art competition. In 2005, she took the third place in a Greek competition. The following year (2006), she won third place in a Cyprus Anti-drug poster competition and again first place in Limassol’s “Epilogi” Cultural Movement art competition. In October 2015, she participated in "VERA World Fine Art Festival" in Lisbon, where she received an award in Drawing for "Diligence and Professionalism"
Her first participation in a group (students’) exhibition took place in 2005 at the age of 17, where 50% of the proceeds went to charity. Even the Minister of Justice and Public Order attended this event and actually bought one of Electra’s paintings.
As a university student, she participated in a lot of group exhibitions, including the 15th Biennale of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean-Symbiosis.
In 2011 she graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts of Thessaloniki and returned to Cyprus where she created her own studio from the ground up, along with her sister Marina Varnava, who is a music teacher. Electra helped several students succeed in their exams and be accepted to the universities they desired. While she was teaching, Electra was also trying to find her own painting style. Her love for the harmony of nature and the courses of design she was giving her students on the correct proportions of things around them, brought closer to realism. One can say that she became fond of any realistic approach.
Her first solo exhibition called “ART VS CULTURE” took place in Rouan Gallery in Limassol in 2014 where she presented her paintings made by pencil. As she says: “The emotions that my works can elicit in people hold the greatest value for me. I do not place more importance on the theme of the painting and I refuse to be considered a “conceptual” artist. I want the average (layman) viewer to understand my work and not to walk away wondering.
Some of my works may appear extremely “controlled” because of their, sometimes overly, realistic approach, but in the process of creation the exact opposite is the case. The drawings begin as a number of lines and scribbles, which are erased or blurred by hand until they eventually begin to settle, little by little, into their final form. The ease that I have with the pencil can be attributed to keen observation and to the importance that I have begun to place on the abstract. My pencils are equally important to my creative process as my erasers.
Pencil is the most inexpensive medium; it is also a medium that can be easily challenged. I was compelled to move in this direction by the subtlety that the pencil can achieve and by the sharpness of the end result. This medium does not impose any significant cost on the artist and can create countless projects, which in the end, carry only the emotional cost of the work.
I do not draw realistically because I aim to create the illusion of reality; I adopt the modernist approach using what is real as a means of creating and not concealing art.”
ART VS CULTURE
1st solo exhibition
Opening speech by
Mr. Panos Ioannides
To begin, let me state the obvious: I am neither an art critic nor an amateur painter. During my high school years, our art teacher, the late Diamantis, encouraged and prepared me to study art. However, after the intervention of another great teacher, Nikos Kranidiotis, I made a definitive turn toward the art of writing. Since then, painting has felt like a lover I betrayed—a captivating beloved I abandoned—and I often wonder if, when faced with that dilemma, I made the right choice.
Electra's honorable invitation to inaugurate her exhibition deeply moved me. It reminded me of my long-lost love for painting, which is why I gladly accepted. And here I am tonight, among distinguished art lovers, admiring and honoring the work of a young artist who, it is evident, made the right career choice from the very start.
I first encountered Electra’s work toward the end of last year when my daughter, Irena, who is responsible for the artistic direction of the English-language cultural magazine In Focus that I publish, sent me some of her drawings and paintings from Toronto for publication. At the time, Electra was unknown to both of us.
The artwork that appeared on my computer screen captivated me instantly. The readers of In Focus, both in its printed edition in Cyprus and its thousands of online visitors, were equally drawn to the plasticity, perfection, grace, beauty, and controlled power of the human body that Electra masterfully depicts in her paintings.
The central theme of this young artist is the perfection of the greatest miracle of creation: the human body! The postures, gestures, and expressions in her work evoke the plasticity and perfection found in the sculptures and paintings of classical antiquity—particularly Greek art—the Renaissance, and the masters of both classical and modern ballet. Elektra explores and refines this theme with persistence and effort, striving, as she herself admits, for "the most complete possible understanding of her works, created with pencil, eraser, and ochre, through the critical human eye."
The nude or minimally dressed bodies she paints, usually set against an utterly minimalistic backdrop, fill the surrounding space with pulsating inner strength and controlled emotion. They embody a thoroughly contemporary artistic perception—one that seeks, through the tangible and the concrete, to express and simultaneously evoke emotions by bridging the two major poles of art: abstraction and realism. She achieves this by employing extensive abstraction.
As Electra herself explains, the lines she draws with her pencil, the deliberate, controlled smudges, the erasures, and the blurring she applies in the final stages of her work help her achieve another fundamental goal: transitioning from abstraction to realism and creating pieces that express and evoke emotions through both of these significant artistic axes.
How exactly this is accomplished, and with how much effort, I cannot say. I can only assume that it is the result of painstaking and imaginative practice—something that can only take place within the artist's studio.
Another striking aspect of Electra’s work is that she does not seek spectacular subjects around which to build her images and compositions. It is clear that she does not aim to create the illusion of reality, as photography does. Instead, she endeavors to use reality—the tangible and the visible—to the least possible extent, not to conceal but to reveal the essence of her artistic subjects.
As I imagine her standing in her studio, critically evaluating her work from a distance, tonight, we too stand in admiration—lovers and seekers of the perfection of the youthful, primarily female, body.
It would be an oversight not to mention that the same strength radiates from the faces—both female and male—that Electra paints. The eyes, expressions, gestures, and expressive hands, along with the flowing or tightly wrapped garments that embrace the forms she creates, exude the grace of classical sculpture. In other words, Electra's entire artistic microcosm and the individual works born from her magical pencil radiate an undeniable force.
In closing, I must say how deeply honored and moved I am by Electra and the Rouan Gallery’s invitation to inaugurate this exhibition. I accepted because I wanted, in my simple words as an ordinary art lover, to convey the profound impact that my first encounter with her work—on my computer screen last December—had on me.
That initial impression is validated and strengthened tonight, as I stand before her paintings in their true scale—paintings that exude the sensitivity and skill of the hands and soul of this young artist.
Congratulations, dear Electra! I wish you a brilliant career—one that I am certain you will achieve.
Best wishes,
Panos Ioannides
