Takis

The Works

Untitled
2010
88 x 82 x 85 cm
Iron sculpture

In 1955, the artist created his first Signals, works he created throughout his life, initially inspired by railway signaling. They consist of thin vertical bars that support small metal pieces or colored light bulbs that flicker, usually presented in groups.
This work is one of these signals; three very thin, non-rigid vertical metal rods hold at their upper ends three small, also metallic pieces, probably found and adapted by the artist. They form an abstract, geometric ensemble in which their immobility is unstable. The air or any nearby movement moves them, producing a disturbance that modifies the ensemble. The metallic elements and their movement evoke the world of a machine driven by chance.
The sign, and its implicit abstraction, is one of the most complex human creations and characterizes the history of civilization. Every sign is, by principle, an enigma, and the signs Takis created throughout his life share this enigmatic component proposed to the viewer.
The most important aspect of Takis’s entire work is the creation of a universe in which the focus is not on the forms and objects we see but on the invisible natural forces that make solid objects possible: the internal forces that keep atoms together and the external forces that act on them.
This piece came to the Stämpfli Foundation thanks to the Icelandic artist Erró. A close friend of both Takis and Peter Stämpfli, Erró, in agreement with Takis, decided to donate the work he owned. He also donated another piece, a magnetic painting titled Pou(r) Erró.

Pou(r) Erró
(The Louse Erró – For Erró)
2011
30 x 30 cm
Magnetic polychrome painting with nails on canvas

In 2011, Takis dedicated this small, square work, 30 cm on each side, to his great friend Erró.
He made three blots with the three primary colors, red, blue, and yellow, as well as black, so the work potentially contains all possible colors. He did it with a special paint containing magnetic components. On top, he placed a handful of carpenter’s nails so that the nails can move randomly on the canvas.
The title is double and humorous. The first uses the French word pou, which means louse, the annoying insect that lives as a parasite in the hair or skin of mammals and birds; It means Erró, the Louse. The second incorporates the r in parentheses and completes the dedication, To Erró.

The artist

(Athens, 1925-2019)

Panayotis Vassilakis best knowed as Takis settled in Paris in 1954 and lived and worked in London, New York, and Athens.


He was one of the pioneers of kinetic art, exploring the invisible forces of nature and the relationship between ordinary objects and the energies that move and control them: magnetism, gravity, light, and sound.
The most important aspect of Takis’s entire work is the creation of a universe in which the focus is not on the forms and objects we see but on the invisible natural forces that make solid objects possible: the internal forces that keep atoms together and the external forces that act on them.
In his early days, after learning to work with iron, Takis created his first sculptures, reminiscent of archaic sculpture, by combining recovered mechanical elements, which served as his base, with pieces he made himself.
He began to introduce magnetism into his artistic research in Paris in 1959. The first work consisted of a metal tool suspended in the air by a magnet. Thus began the series of works called “telemagnetic.” In the French capital, he established friendships and relationships with artists with whom he shared interests, such as Jean Tinguely, Yves Klein, and the historic gallery owner, also Greek, Iris Clert. It was at the Clert gallery that he presented a magnetic sculpture, actually an action, in which he suspended a poet friend of his in the air thanks to the effect achieved with an installation of powerful electromagnets.
Takis expanded his work to include magnetic walls and musical sculptures formed by taut metallic bodies, struck by an equally metallic element suspended by the attraction of an electromagnet.
At the same time, his research expanded into light and sound, such as the sculptures titled Télélumières, created with cathode-ray tubes that combine the organic form of the tube filled with blue light with the presence of machinery.