Vakalo, Eleni (1921—)
Vakalo, Eleni (1921—)
Greek poet and art critic. Born in 1921 in Athens, Greece; attended university and the Sorbonne, Paris; married a stage designer.
Eleni Vakalo was born in 1921 and grew up in Athens, where she attended the university and studied archaeology. Later, she was a student of art history at the Sorbonne in Paris. With her husband, she founded the School of Fine Arts in Athens in 1958, and she taught there for several years.
In addition to being a poet, Vakalo is one of the most well-known art critics in Greece, and has written extensively on this topic. Her works include numerous reviews and articles, as well as the verse collections Themes and Variations (1945) and Recollections from a Nightmarish City (1948). Her style is personal and nonlyrical, expressing alienation, and experimental, eschewing traditional forms. In The Forest (1954) and Description of the Body (1959), she displays her characteristically unsentimental but subjective writing. Vakalo feels an artistic kinship with the poet Marianne Moore , and has translated Moore's poems into Greek. Translations of Vakalo's work have appeared in English, French, and Russian collections.
sources:
Buck, Claire, ed. The Bloomsbury Guide to Women's Literature. NY: Prentice Hall, 1992.
Kelly Winters , freelance writer