Chryssa

"The vulgarity of America as seen in the lights of Times Square is…extremely poetic. A foreigner can observe this, describe this. Americans feel it…Times Square I knew had this great wisdom––it was Homeric."

–– Chryssa, 1968

Chryssa was an artist who created mixed-media sculptures that explore the interplay of light and shadow. Through manipulations of salvaged materials, including signage, newspaper printing plates, lettering, plexiglass, and neon, she reflected upon mass communication and technology in the United States.

Growing up in Greece during World War II, Chryssa became acquainted with the power of letters and symbols through the proliferation of wartime messages by underground resistance groups. In 1954, Chryssa enrolled in the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, familiarizing herself with the American art held in the city’s museums. She was increasingly drawn to the United States as a place, where, in her view, innovation and “self-expression was more possible” than it was in the “very old civilizations” of Athens, Rome, and Paris.

In 1955, she married the San Francisco–based artist Jean Varda and sailed to New York City. On her arrival, she visited the glimmering lights of Times Square, and the commercial hub became a lifelong touchstone of her practice. By the mid-1950s, Chryssa resided in the Bay Area, studying at the California School of Fine Arts (present-day San Francisco Art Institute). She pursued her nascent interest in light through relief sculptures that she termed “static light,” including White Relief (1960, SAAM). In these, Chryssa explored how to make pegs, letters, and symbols appear dynamic without technological media.

Separated from her husband in 1958, Chryssa moved to New York City. Around this time, she developed her interest in fragmenting typography in paintings that incorporated New York Times crosswords and stock listings. In 1962, she added neon. Her delight in playing with language continued in works like “Ourselves are fate.” – Herman Melville, White Jacket, 1850 (1965, SAAM), created for the Container Corporation of America's advertisement series Great Ideas of Western Man (1965). While in New York City, she also connected with a circle of artists, including Agnes Martin, who lived on Coenties Slip in Manhattan, and developed close friendships with significant art world figures, including Betty Parsons, the artist and gallerist, and Dorothy C. Miller, a curator at the Museum of Modern Art.

From 1964 to 1966, Chryssa fabricated a monumental sculpture on Times Square titled The Gates to Times Square (1964–66, Buffalo AKG Art Museum). It included flickering neon and plexiglass that were intended, in her words, to proliferate “the work in all directions” as if it were “breathing, whether in or out.” In this period, Chryssa also created plexiglass boxes in which she placed paper plans and leftover fragments from her sculptures, asserting they were as integral as any other media.

In the 1970s, Chryssa continued her experiments with textual fragments amid extended international travel. At the decade’s end, she returned to New York City, developing new interpretations of Chinese characters in response to her visits to Chinatown. Late in her career, Chryssa returned to her earlier experiments with the poetic play of light inspired by Times Square.

Authored by Gabriella Shypula, American Women’s History Initiative Writer and Editor, 2024.