Movement

In the late 1950s Achilleas Apergis moved away from figurative sculpture and experimented with abstraction, presenting the first examples of his personal abstract language at the French Institute (1958), where he presented a series of sculptures executed with the technique of metal melting. He uses mainly iron rods, which he fuses together using the medium of welding. He draws in relief on the metal surfaces with the flame of oxygen and by this method he transforms the solid property of the material into an almost two-dimensional surface affected by traces of corrosion, destruction and tensions. The volume of the material is transformed into a set of light rhythmic movements, which are projected like a three-dimensional script into space, capturing the experiences and memories of war and post-war hardship. He gives these sections of works titles that refer to nature and natural phenomena, suggesting his interest in the plastic rendering of movement, of change. After 1962, the iron rods are replaced by another material, bronze, which enables the artist to work on the surface and exploit its chromatic nuances. In a series of sculptures executed in 1966, he adopted the traditional casting technique, creating monolithic blocks of bronze that resemble petrified tree trunks.