KYRIACOU George

Cypriot, 1940
George Kyriacou - Ethereal Madonna bronze

George Kyriacou was an elementary school teacher for two years before going on to study sculpture at Chelsea School of Art in London from 1961 to 1964. From the time he graduated until 1969 he worked as a secondary school art teacher. In 1969 he was appointed head of the arts sector of the Cultural Services of the Ministry of Education. Later, in 1972, he moved to Paris to study museology at La Sorbonne on a scholarship from The French government. He then studied at the Central London Polytechnic (1976-1977), where he obtained a Diploma in Arts and Leisure Administration. He has been a pioneer of contemporary sculpture in Cyprus and he has worked extensively in monumental sculpture.

Kyriacou’s habit of rescuing items, which have had another life, is integral to his process of working. He likes to explore and exploit the past life of abandoned objects, which have been discarded as useless and to give them a new life while still retaining a sense of the old.

The human figure is always central to Kyriacou’s work, however tangentially however abstracted. Life, death, fertility, the universal man, the male and the female, the human condition are the dominant concerns of his work. His persistence to obtain purity of form is in an internal dialogue with his thematography and philosophy.

George Kyriacou held his first solo exhibition at the Hilton Hotel, Nicosia in 1969.
Since 1964 he has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions in Cyprus and abroad. Notably, the 1967 Paris Biennale des Jeunes, the1968 Venice Biennale, the 1968 Alexandria Biennale, Ora Gallery, Athens in 1970, Athenaeum Gallery, Madrid in 1971, Gallery K, London from 1991 to1999 and The London Contemporary art Fair in 1993 and 1995.

Since 1965 he has received many important commissions for public monuments in Cyprus. Among them: the M. Parides monument, Larnaca, 1966, the M. Savva monument, Akaki, 1967, the V. Michaeledes monument, Lefkoniko, 1968 and the Monument to the Unknown Policeman, 1970.
He was also a pioneer in placing art on buildings such as a coloured relief for the new Lyceum building in Larnaca, 1969 and a bronze relief for the Yiorkion building complex in Nicosia, 1996.