Shopping in Athens – Sculptures, paintings & jewellery – Greece

Yanni Souvatzoglou is another artist whom we’ve come to know well during our visits to Athens.  According to his profile, he first exhibited his work of art at the age of 12 and received favourable reviews.  He then experimented with a range of artform, including combining his graphic art talent with photography to produce a 3-dimentional imagery which then became his unique artistic style.

Today, Yanni works with clay, bronze, silver, gold, stone, marble and plexiglass, creating interesting sculptures and other artwork.  Our first purchase from him was the Marathonrunners.   The marathonrunners are bronze running men embedded in a marble platform and they can be swivelled around so that either the men are all running in the same direction, or one could be in a bad mood and decide to turn around.  We thought the sculpture should have been used in the Olympic games, but unfortunately, the games organizers did not have the vision to appreciate the artistic merit of the sculpture. 

Our latest acquisition from Yanni is a very nice sculpture of an olive tree and we are anxiously awaiting its arrival.  Yanni’s window display at his Voulis Street shop usually attracts the attention of tourists passing by.  Yanni will happily explain to you the creative concept behind any piece of work that you may be interested in.  He gets a lot of repeat customers and on one visit a group of American airline stewardesses had returned to buy more of his work. 

With leftover silver or bronze, Yanni manages to make them into pieces of jewellery.  On an earlier trip I bought 3 twisted silver rings and put them together to form one ring.  Yanni was quite impressed with my creation.  I notice he’s got a lot more jewellery these days and these individual pieces were selling well when we were in his shop.

Helen