Sofia Portalaki (b, 1947 in Heraklion, Crete, lives and works in Athens, Greece) is a painter. She studied at the School of Fine Arts in Athens and the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris.
Since the early 1990s she has addressed the complexities of geometric abstraction. Her preferred medium has been acrylic on paper or acrylic on canvas. All her colors are created by mixing high quality pigments. She has never used painting out of a tube. Using vertical and horizontals, diagonals or segments of circles combined with highly idiosyncratic and harmonious color combinations Portalaki has created a significant body of work in the past 35 years.
Her practice is rooted in three defined traditions: the weaving practices of the eastern Mediterranean, Byzantine painting of the 11th to the 16th centuries and 20th century abstract painting. Childhood summer experiences on the mountains of Crete and the witness of a practice of ancient traditions of weaving rugs, blankets and kilims by women of her family using bright colors in geometric patterns is at the foundations of the works she creates. The apprenticeship of Byzantine painting during her teenager years and her subsequent occupation with copies of classical Byzantine portable paintings for the Benaki and the Byzantine museums in Athens provided additional experiences and training for the creation of unique color combinations and juxtapositions. The mixing of these two traditions inscribed Portalaki in the 20th century continuum of abstract painting following the steps of figures such as Sonia Delaunay, Sophie Tauber-Arp or Agnes Martin.
The compositions are first created as small sketches on notebooks. Following a rigorous selection, a number of them are executed as works on paper and the most successful ones are realized as paintings.
Her works are included in the collections of the most important museums such as the National Gallery, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Crete, the Rhodes Municipal Gallery, the Archeological Museum of Thessaloniki as well as in numerous corporate and private collections.
