Sophia Vari(1940-2023) worked across painting, sculpture, collage and jewellery to explore figurative forms, harmony and balance. Using bronze, marble, wood and precious metals, she captured a sense of movement and playfulness in her sculptures.

La Reine [The Queen] and Le Roi [The King] represent chess pieces, enlarged to three metres high and cast in bronze. Vari used blocks of colour to exaggerate her geometric forms. Black and white usually represent opposing sides of a chess game, but in these sculptures the colours unite and exist in harmony.

Vari was born in Athens, Greece and later studied in the UK and in Paris. Through her European travel, she encountered art movements including Cubism and Surrealism which influenced her own art. After focusing on figurative painting in the first part of her career, Vari began to make sculpture from the mid-1970s. She was drawn to the physicality of sculpture and its presence within a space. A trip to Egypt during this time also had a strong impact on her and inspired her to consider monumental sculpture as a medium to express her ideas. She also takes inspiration from indigenous art of the Americas, including sculptures of particular cultures or civilisations such as the Olmec, the first major civilisation in Mexico.