Artist’s CV
Leonidas Kalamaras (1932-2014):
A sculptor and painter, who was recognized in his second homeland and brightened the list of distinguished Greeks of the diaspora not only in Australia, but also on other continents, the work of Leonidas Kalamaras became identified with Greece. He was “one of the most characteristic and important figures of contemporary art”, as academic Chrysanthos Christou, emeritus professor of Art History, had very aptly characterized him. Leonidas was the one who essentially organized the Department of Sculpture of the Claremont School of Art in Perth, where since 1968, as Senior Professor of Sculpture, he has nurtured generations of young artists.
The influences he received from ancient Greek sculpture are clearly visible in his works, influences that he applied with dedication, but at the same time with a great deal of freedom. By general admission, the artist’s love for his homeland and Greek arts is, moreover, pervasive in his work and he captured it in an exceptional way. He himself emphasized that no other art today comes as close to Ancient Greek as sculpture. “I have always been magnetized by that profound humanism that dominates the classical figures of Greek Art,” he said with the shyness of an adolescent that characterized him. He preferred that others talk about him, but he wanted, and succeeded in doing so, for his works to have the first say.
Leonidas Kalamaras arrived in Australia in 1950 to meet his father Athanasios, who lived and worked in the forests on the outskirts of Manjimup, Western Australia, 300 miles from Perth. There they made sleepers for railway lines. Leonidas brought with him his partner Vasso, a writer and poet, whom he met during the short time he stayed in Athens and fell in love with forever. Their first meeting took place at the Athens School of Fine Arts, where Leonidas so desired to study!
“We left together, with many dreams, for the port of Perth and from there we traveled another 300 miles to reach Manjimup, where we lived for ten whole years… There we saw nothing but the vastness of the forest. We worked very hard, but we were so young. There, we solidified our family, there the dreams we had began to take on a faint form,” recalls Vaso Kalamara, who now refuses to believe, nine months later, that her Leonidas is no longer with her.
Leonidas had boundless appreciation for the hard work of loggers. The images conveyed to him by his father, Thanasis Kalamaras, who first went to Australia in 1924, were vivid in his memory. He returned home in 1930, where he stayed for three years. Then he left for Australia again.
“The loggers at that time were, in the majority, Kastellorizo and Macedonians. As soon as they got off the boats, they were given a shovel and a saw and sent into the dense forests of Western Australia to cut down tree trunks for the railway tracks. They lived in tents, near the rivers, and were fed every two to three months. Flour, pasta, fat and eggs, which they had to hide from the kangaroos and koalas that found a way to dig them up and leave them hungry.
It was hell in the summer from the heat waves and freezing in the winter, inside the tent that was blowing in from everywhere. They didn’t get bored, though. In the evenings they would gather in the tents and tell old stories. They would read and reread newspapers, two and three months old, and comment on … current events! A formidable bunch of people.”
“Two or three years before we came to Leonidas’ father’s, who became mine, fortunately for us, the father and a few other villagers began to plant tobacco in rented fields. We stayed there for a year. Leonidas became a partner with his father, and together they took out a loan from the bank and bought 6 miles of wild forest land from the village. The two of them did it with their hands, back then there were no facilities like now. They felled the huge trees with large saws and cleared a place for a field. There we grew our own tobacco. We never parted ways with our father, he was the kindest and most loving grandfather to his two grandchildren, until 1981, when he passed away.
In 1960-61, Leonidas managed to fulfill his great dream: He returned to Greece with his family, where he attended the sculpture department at the Athens School of Fine Arts for a year with his first teacher Yannis Pappas, while Vasso studied theater at the Drama School of the State Theater, with the late Socrates Karantinos as director… and their two children went to a Greek Primary School.
Returning to Perth, Leonidas completed his studies and received a diploma in sculpture and painting. In 1968 he was elected Full Professor of the Claremont School of Art, Perth, W.A. where he essentially organized the sculpture department.
“His rise to the highest level in the following years confirmed the dynamic he developed in the field of Art, an expanded, coherent art.”
