Biography
Despo Magoni was born in Athens in 1943. She is a Greek American artist and has lived in New York since 1968. She paints, draws and makes artist's books. Her work is mainly about people, and especially about women: about violence, power and pain. In her own words, “The tree of my life has its roots in the old world but it blossomed in Brooklyn.”
From 1962 to 1967 she studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts, in the studios of Yannis Moralis and Kostas Georgakopoulos. She earned a degree in painting and a diploma in fresco and icon painting. One of her student works, Outdoor Study (1967), is still in the School's collection. In 1968 she moved to New York, where she studied printmaking at the New School for Social Research and worked as a graphic designer until 1974.
Her first solo exhibition took place in 1973 at the Rotunda Gallery in Athens. That year and again in 1975 she took part in the Panhellenic Exhibitions at the Zappeion. In 1974 she won the Gold Medal (Palme d'Or) at the Saint-Germain-des-Prés International Festival of Painting and Graphic Arts in Paris. In her early years in New York she tried abstract color-field painting. She soon returned to the human figure, however, and it has remained at the center of her work ever since.
Her painting has its roots in Expressionism. Her figures are intense and often violent, and they show the harsh sides of human life, especially women's lives. She takes stories from myth, history and current events and brings them into the present. She often works in series. In People in the News (1977) she drew in pastel on pages of The New York Times. The series Fears of a Knife Thrower's Assistant is about the fears of a knife thrower's assistant. The Queen's Moves in a Game of Chess compares a woman's position to the moves of the queen in a game of chess and was shown in 1994 at the Brooklyn College Art Gallery. In A Thousand and One Nights (1996–2000) she retells the story of Scheherazade. Her work matured within the feminist climate of New York in the 1970s and 1980s. Since the early 2000s her language has become more abstract, with themes such as the anatomy of the body, the labyrinth and the cosmos.
A large part of her work is artist's books. She often rebuilds old novels in her own way, as in Deconstructing Huckleberry Finn (2016), and shows them through Central Booking gallery and The Center for Book Arts in New York.
She has had more than twenty solo exhibitions in the United States, Greece and Korea. In New York she has shown at Nonson Gallery (1976, 1978, 1979), Kouros Gallery (1984, 2009), The Alternative Museum (1986), Andre Zarre Gallery (1997), John Jay College (1998, 2000) and The Empty Circle in Brooklyn (2021). In Athens she has shown at Ora Gallery and Nees Morfes Gallery. In New Jersey she has shown at the Robeson Gallery at Rutgers (1994), and in Korea at the Shinsaegae Gallery in Gwangju (2001).
She has also taken part in many group exhibitions. Among them were Visual Politics (1982) and Disinformation: The Manufacture of Consent (1985) at The Alternative Museum, Three Generations of Greek Women Artists at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC (1989), and Images of Death in Contemporary Art at the Haggerty Museum of Art in Milwaukee (1990). These were followed by Penelopeia: The Other Journey at the Hellenic Museum in Chicago (2006), Nees Morfes / 50 Years Later at the Benaki Museum (2009) and 30: A Brooklyn Salon at BRIC (2011). She also took part in Transplants: Greek Diaspora Artists (2018) and No Trespassing: Artists Comment on the Migration Crisis (2024) at John Jay College, and in Life-Giving Art: 9 Women Artists of the Diaspora at Queens College (2020). In 2011 BRIC Contemporary Art named her Artist of the Month.
Writers on her work include Eleni Vakalo, Manos Stefanidis, Donald Kuspit, Raphael Rubinstein, Eleanor Heartney and Thalia Vrachopoulos. Her works are in the Museum of Contemporary Art of Crete, the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, the Vorres Museum, the Florina Museum of Contemporary Art, the Municipal Gallery of Athens, the Mint Museum in North Carolina, the Centro de Arte Moderno in Guadalajara, the Kwangju Art Museum in Korea and the University of Miami.
Despo Magoni lives and works in Brooklyn. Over more than fifty years of work, she has turned her own experience as an immigrant and as a woman into an art that speaks to everyone.
Bibliography – Sources
- Magoni, D. “Biography” and “Resume.” The artist's official website.
- Art22. “Magoni Despo” (2012).
- Museum of Contemporary Art of Crete, Rethymno. “Magoni Despo.”
- Anya and Andrew Shiva Gallery, John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY). “Despo Magoni.”
- SearchCulture.gr. “Magoni Despo,” Outdoor Study (1967), collection of the Athens School of Fine Arts.
- Morgan, R. C. (2024, April 26). “A Nuanced Exploration of Art Books Made by Three Artists.” Whitehot Magazine.
- Tsakas, D. (2020, May 23). “'Life-Giving Art' – Another Innovation of the Greek American Diaspora Program at Queens College.” Anamniseis.
- Rubinstein, R. (1994). Old Game, New Rules: The Queen's Moves in a Game of Chess. Exhibition catalogue, Brooklyn College Art Gallery, New York.
- Kuspit, D. (1999). Despo Magoni's Humanistic Expression. Exhibition catalogue, John Jay College Gallery, New York.
- Heartney, E. (1997). Myth & Memory. Exhibition catalogue, Andre Zarre Gallery, New York.
- Iliopoulou-Rogan, D. & Posner, H. (1989). Three Generations of Greek Women Artists. Exhibition catalogue, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC.
- Portelance, B. (2011, September 28). “Artist of the Month: Despo Magoni.” BRIC Contemporary Art.
- Vakalo, E. (1982). Post-War Greek Art: Expressionism – Surrealism, vol. 2. Athens: Kedros.
- Stefanidis, M. (2001). Ellinomousion: Six Centuries of Greek Painting, vol. 2. Athens: Militos.
This biography was created with the help of artificial intelligence.