Alexander Iolas

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Alexander Iolas

Alexander Iolas ( Greek Αλέξανδρος Ιόλας , born March 25, 1907 in Alexandria , Egypt ; † June 8, 1987 in New York ) was a ballet dancer, art collector and gallery owner of Greek descent. In addition to his Alexander Iolas Gallery in New York and those in Paris and Milan , he and partners founded other galleries in Athens (Iolas-Zoumboulakis Gallery), Rome (Galleria Iolas-Galatea), Geneva (Galerie Iolas-Engelberts) and Madrid (Galería Iolas- Velasco).

Life

Iolas was the son of the Greek cotton merchant couple Andreas and Persephone Coutsoudis from Kos , who had settled in Egypt. Iolas was originally baptized in the name Konstantinos, his godfather was the later politician and Greek Prime Minister Konstantinos Tsaldaris .

In his parents' house he had a large library, which he used extensively, and learned to play the piano. At his request, his parents bought a small work by Cézanne .

Iolas moved to Piraeus and then to Berlin in 1924 with the recommendation of an uncle who had previously lived there. He first worked as a pianist and came into contact with Dimitri Mitropoulos and Panos Aravantinos , who worked at the Berlin State Opera . Both refused to employ Iolas because he did not speak enough German and suggested that he should take up ballet training. As a ballet dancer, Iolas toured with the Theodora Roosevelt Company , with the ballet ensemble of the Marquis de Cuevas and with Margherita Wallmann in Salzburg. In 1933 he settled permanently in Paris, where he met the Greek-born Giorgio de Chirico , from whom he bought a painting.

In 1935 he emigrated to the USA and came into contact with Miro in order to design a set. He began trading in art and specialized in surrealist art from the 1930s / 1940s, preferring works by Max Ernst and René Magritte . In 1940 he was on stage for the last time. In 1944 he opened with financial support from Robert Rothschild, Elizabeth Arden and Maria dei Principi Ruspoli Hugo gallery he after their ancestors Victor Hugo , Hugo Gallery named. There are various theses about the occasion of his name change from Konstantin Koutsoudis to Alexander Iolas, one of them that it was a wish of Theodora Roosevelt. He signed a contract with Magritte in 1946 and made him known in the USA, subsequently Iolas became his most important buyer of works. In 1947 he commissioned Friedrich Kiesler to design the rooms in the Hugo Gallery. At the end of the 1940s, he became aware of the graphic artist Andy Warhol , whom he suggested an artistic career and made his first solo exhibition possible.

In 1955 he founded the Jackson-Iolas Gallery together with the former dancer Brooks Jackson. In the 1960s, Iolas' galleries in Geneva, Milan, Paris and New York were among the hottest exhibition spaces. He represented Victor Brauner , Alexander Calder , Joseph Cornell , Yves Klein , Niki de Saint Phalle , Man Ray , Edward Ruscha , Roberto Matta , Jean Tinguely and Andy Warhol , among others . Iolas organized both Warhol's first solo exhibition in New York in 1952 and his last one during his lifetime. From 1962 he supported Niki de Saint Phalle financially for many years, organized her exhibitions and introduced her to the circle of prominent artists.

Iolas motivated Dominique de Ménil to create the later Menil Collection and made her aware of the work of the Surrealists. The work Mouton de Laine by François-Xavier Lalanne , which Iolas also sold to her, reached a price of 5,682,500 US dollars at Christie's auction house in 2014.

Retreat into private life from 1976

On the basis of a promise to Max Ernst, Iolas closed all galleries with his death in 1976, except for the parent company in New York. In the mid-1980s, he also closed his Manhattan gallery and retired to Athens . There he permanently moved into the villa in Agia Paraskevi, which Dimitris Pikionis had designed for him from the 1960s, the recommendation for the architect came from Christian Zervos .

Iolas was also politically active, as a supporter and friend of Konstantinos Karamanlis he began to smell the change of government against Andreas Papandreou . Iolas' statements in public carried weight and from 1984 several campaigns against him by left-wing Athens newspapers followed, which also led to prosecutions against him. Iolas had a lot of material assets, but hardly any funds, so that he was financially burdened by the high legal fees. He made it easy for his opponents by also opposing petty-bourgeois aesthetic ideas, for example the statement from an interview "The Parthenon has been destroyed, and that makes it beautiful". The minister of culture Melina Mercouri tried several times to influence Iolas personally, but his desire to convert the villa into a museum failed. Iolas distanced himself more and more from Athens society and donated around 50 works of art to found the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki and part of his collection to the new Center Pompidou in Paris.

His death preceded an agreement with the Greek state from 1987 onwards, he died at the age of 80 while traveling in a New York hospital. . His death was the result of AIDS infection from contaminated blood during eye surgery in California years earlier. His sister Niki Stifel and his niece Lina Nation lived in Athens, and his niece Sylvia de Cuevas in New York.

After his death, people from the area began selling the collection and the household effects. The almost empty and orphaned villa in Agia Paraskevi was finally ravaged by homeless people and vandals, so the banister (a sculpture by Claude Lalanne) was probably stolen by scrap thieves. A group of investors acquired the property to build a residential complex, which the monument protection prevented.

Commemoration

In 2001 the Filopappou Group was formed in Athens, which draws attention to the forgotten work of Iolas with various campaigns and exhibitions, including Destroy Alexandros Iolas and Alexander Iolas: twenty years after 1987–2007 , an archive is also being built up. On the initiative of Kyriakos Mitsotakis , a parliamentary group was formed on the theme of the villa and the memory of Iolas, but the economic crisis led to the initiative being abandoned.

In memory of her uncle Alexander Iolas, Sylvia de Cuevas donated a print from the Alexander series by Andy Warhol to the Baltimore Museum of Art in 2010 .

In 2014, the Paul Kasmin Gallery in New York showed the exhibition Alexander the Great: The Iolas Gallery 1955–1987

In 2017 the film Fall into Ruin by William E. Jones was released, which thematizes the history of the Iolas villa.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.bibliotheque.gr/archives/30612
  2. ^ Magritte museum: Alexandre Iolas. Archived from the original on April 25, 2012 ; Retrieved October 26, 2014 .
  3. ↑ Alexander Iolas, Ex-Dancer And Surrealist-Art Champion (obituary). The New York Times , June 12, 1987, accessed January 2, 2009 .
  4. ^ A b David Bourdon: Warhol , DuMont, Cologne 1989, ISBN 3-7701-2338-7 , pp. 32, 415.
  5. ↑ Biography. nikidesaintphalle.com, archived from the original on January 12, 2015 ; accessed on October 28, 2014 (English).
  6. ↑ Pamela G. Smart: Sacred Modern: Faith, Activism, and Aesthetics in the Menil Collection, p. 75
  7. ↑ http://www.mdpi.com/2076-0752/3/1/105/pdf
  8. ↑ http://tvxs.gr/news/%CF%83%CE%B1%CE%BD-%CF%83%CE%AE%CE%BC%CE%B5%CF%81%CE%B1/% CE% B1% CE% BB% CE% AD% CE% BE% CE% B1% CE% BD% CE% B4% CF% 81% CE% BF% CF% 82-% CE% B9% CF% 8C% CE % BB% CE% B1% CF% 82-% CE% B6% CF% 89% CE% AE-% CF% 87% CF% 89% CF% 81% CE% AF% CF% 82-% CE% B5% CF% 87% CE% B8% CF% 81% CE% BF% CF% 8D% CF% 82-% CE% B4% CE% B5% CE% BD-% CE% AD% CF% 87% CE% B5% CE% B9-% CE% BC% CF% 85% CF% 83% CF% 84% CE% AE% CF% 81% CE% B9% CE% BF
  9. ↑ http://www.peoplegreece.com/article/sinentefxi-chimarros-o-psinakis-iche-psichosi-ton-iola-ton-antegrafe-stin-omilia-ke-ntisimo-tou/
  10. ↑ http://www.bibliotheque.gr/archives/30612
  11. ↑ http://www.mdpi.com/2076-0752/3/1/105/pdf
  12. ↑ http://www.acgart.gr/INFORMATION/NEWSLETTER/IOLAS/IOLAS.htm
  13. ↑ http://www.nytimes.com/1987/06/12/obituaries/alexander-iolas-ex-dancer-and-surrealist-art-champion.html
  14. ↑ http://www.mdpi.com/2076-0752/3/1/105/pdf
  15. ↑ http://www.mdpi.com/2076-0752/3/1/105/pdf
  16. ^ Yves Klein Archives. January 6, 2017, accessed January 7, 2020 .
  17. ↑ Kasmin - ALEXANDER THE GREAT THE IOLAS GALLERY 1955 - 1987. Accessed January 7, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Iolas, Alexander
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Greek ballet dancer, art collector and gallery owner of Greek descent
DATE OF BIRTH March 25, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Alexandria , Egypt
DATE OF DEATH June 8, 1987
Place of death New York City