Nata Mela was born on July 10, 1923 in Kifissia, Attica, and graduated from the German School in 1941. She grew up in a metropolitan environment with historical roots. She is the granddaughter of the Macedonian fighter Pavlos Melas and Natalia Dragoumi. Her father was Michael Melas and her mother was the daughter of Ioannis Pesmazoglou, founder of the National Bank of Greece together with Georgios Stavrou. Her grandmother on her father’s side came from the Dragoumi family and was the sister of Ion Dragoumi and the daughter of Stefanos Dragoumi.
In 1942 he went to the Athens School of Fine Arts (ASFA), with professors Kostas Dimitriadis and Michalis Tombros, and worked in the workshop of Thanasis Apartis. Upon graduating in 1948, he worked for a while with Dimitris Pikionis on the stele on the tomb of Metropolitan Chrysanthos and later on the Monument to the Fallen at Leontio of Nemea in the Peloponnese. During that time he made the busts of Stefanos Dragoumis at the Zappeion and of Georgios Pesmazoglou at the National Bank of Greece, where Pikionis’ influence is evident.
After graduating, she opened her own workshop on the top floor of a house on Vasilissis Sofias and a little later, in 1945, in the stable of a house on Mourouzi Street. Nikos Engonopoulos, Yannis Tsarouchis, Andreas Embeirikos, Yannis Moralis, etc. gathered there, among others. In 1951, she married the architect Aris Konstantinidis (1913 – 1993) with whom she had two children, Dimitris and Alexandra, and for ten years she stopped working, working on the construction of sets at the Art Theater of Karolos Koun.
Initially, she worked with marble and stone, while in the late 1960s, when she returned from Paris, where she had learned to work with oxygen, she turned to the use of metal, adopting the teachings of abstract art, which dominated the Western art scene, using “ready-made” ironmongery and tools, which she procured from Athinas Street. She draws her subjects from the natural world, birds and animals – roosters, rams, bulls, goats, pigeons – and from Greek mythology.
Natalia Mela presented her creations in solo exhibitions (Athens 1963 and 1964, Vienna 1965, New York 1970), as well as in international exhibitions at the Biennale of São Paulo in Brazil 1965, in Paris – Salon de la jeune sculpture 1976, 1967. Her works are in public spaces and private collections in Greece and abroad. She recently presented a series of 35 paper sculptures entitled “the paper ones”.
Official site:http://www.nataliamela.gr
