Opy Zouni was born in 1941 in Cairo, Egypt. There, she began to study painting, ceramics and photography and later, in 1963, she travelled to Greece to expand her knowledge at the School of Fine Arts, having as teacher Yannis Moralis. She drew inspiration on and studied in depth geometry through ancient Greek and Egyptian art. As she said: “These two civilizations are characterized by geometric structure and thinking” Thus, geometry would act as the artist’s missing link to the environment and her sensibilities. Much of her work is focused on three-dimensional paintings with intense scenery, where light and shadow are rendered through colour surfaces, while depth, perpective, and the notion of hallucination and optical illusion are rendered based on an architecturally structured, yet dreamy space. Also, alarge part of her study and experimentation is dedicated to light, resulting in the transition to sculpture and construction.
Biographical Note…
I started out with classical studies, first in Cairo and then in Athens. I felt at the time that they were for me the only possible adventure which I had to go through in order to find my own personality – as long as I did in fact have one!… Fortunately, I went through the experience of two totally different classical schools. Which made me think that Nietzsche’s remark in ‘The Realist Painter’ was totally to the point: All Nature faithfully’ – But by what feint. Can Nature be subdued to art’s constraint? Her smallest fragment is still infinite! And so he paints but what he likes in it. What does he like? He likes, what he can paint! Finally… There is continuity in my work to date, in other words there are no breaks so intense that one period is completely different from the preceding one. The same subjects, the same, more or less, concerns preoccupy me almost like obsessions. In art I feel that the illusion exists, and for this reason I have nothing against using in several compositions the geometric perspective of the Renaissance and other optical illusions. I would like to cite Delacroix at this point: ‘What is real for me are the illusions I create with my paintings.’ OPY ZOUNI 9/1979