Eleni Vakalo

Eleni Vakalo (1921-2001) was born in Istanbul. In 1944, she married the painter and set designer Giorgos Vakalo. She studied at the University of Athens and received her degree in archaeology from the School of Philosophy. She attended courses at the Sorbonne, specializing in art history. Vakalo worked as an art critic for the newspaper "Ta Nea" from 1952 to 1974 (with a two-year interruption during the dictatorship) and for the magazine "Zygos" (1955-1967). She was a founding member of the "Vakalo School" during 1957-58. Until 1990, she taught art history and elements of visual perception at the same school, remaining a member of its administration until the end of her life. She also served on the Board of Directors of the National Gallery after 1994. Vakalo contributed articles and essays to many magazines. She entered the literary world in 1944 with her poems published in the magazine "Nea Grammata." By 1997, she had published a total of fourteen poetry books and two collected editions (1981, 1995). As a poet, Eleni Vakalo is considered by critics to be part of the first post-war generation of post-surrealist poets, alongside her contemporaries Miltos Sachtouris, Nanos Valaoritis, Mando Aravantinou, Takis Sinopoulos, Hector Kaknavatos, Takis Varvitsiotis, Aristotelis Nikolaidis, and N. D. Karouzos. Her poetic work, divided into four periods from 1944 to 1997, essentially forms a textual continuum articulated through its individual compositions. In 1991, she was awarded the First State Prize for Poetry for the collection "Events and Stories of Lady Rodalina." She was also honored with the Academy of Athens Award in 1997, and in 1998 she was bestowed the title of honorary doctorate by the Department of History and Archaeology of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. In 2000, she was awarded the title of honorary doctorate by the University of Derby. She passed away in Athens in 2001.