Memos Makris

Memos Makris (Agamemnon Makris), (Patras, 1 April 1913 – Athens, 26 May 1993) was a 20th-century Greek sculptor. He was born and spent his childhood in Patras. In 1919, his family moved to Athens. He studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts under Michalis Tombros, Epam. Thomopoulos and K. Dimitriadis. He quickly became involved in the artistic and cultural life of the 1930s.

During the German occupation, Makris played an active role in the National Resistance. After the liberation, he continued his studies in Paris. He was expelled from France in 1950 due to his left-wing political beliefs and found political asylum in Hungary. In Hungary, he was actively involved in the country’s artistic, political and cultural movements, where he established himself as one of the sculptors who expressed the state’s official aesthetic through works in the spirit of socialist realism.

In 1964, he was stripped of his Greek citizenship, which he regained in 1975 following the restoration of democracy in Greece. In 1978, his first retrospective exhibition in Greece was held at the National Gallery.