14 Facts About Chryssa

Chryssa Vardea-Mavromichali was a Greek American artist who worked in a wide variety of media.

Chryssa worked from the mid-1950s in New York City studios and worked since 1992 in the studio she established in Neos Kosmos, Athens, Greece.

Chryssa was born in Athens into the famous Mavromichalis family from the Mani Peninsula.

Chryssa's family, while not rich, was educated and cultured; one of her sisters, who studied medicine, was a friend of the poet and novelist Nikos Kazantzakis.

Shortly before her birth, Chryssa's father passed away, she was raised by her mother and two older sisters.

Chryssa grew up in Nazi-occupied Greece, which she later cites as formative to her art practice.

Chryssa began painting during her teenage years and studied to be a social worker.

In 1954, at age twenty-one, Chryssa sailed for the United States, arrived in New York, and went to San Francisco to study at the California School of Fine Arts.

April of 1955, Chryssa has her first experience at Times Square, which would become a major influence for her work.

Chryssa's image is included in the iconic 1972 poster Some Living American Women Artists by Mary Beth Edelson.

At the age of 79, Chryssa died of heart-related problems, in Athens, Greece, on December 23,2013.

Chryssa's work was shown at the Museum of Modern Art in curator Dorothy Canning Miller's Americans 1963 exhibition.

In 1992, after closing her SoHo studio, which art dealer Leo Castelli had described as "one of the loveliest in the world," Chryssa returned to Greece.

Chryssa found a derelict cinema which had become a storeroom stacked with abandoned school desks and chairs, behind the old Fix Brewery near the city center in Neos Kosmos, Athens.