One of the most playful, innovative and eccentric artists of Postwar Europe,
Takis (b.1925, Athens) was a catalysing figure in the artistic and literary
circles of Paris, London and New York from the 1950s onward.
Pioneering a variety of sculpture, painting and musical structures, Takis
made works that harness invisible natural forces. Perhaps best known are
his innovative 'telemagnetic' works, begun in the late 1950s using everyday
metallic objects that float in space through the use of magnets. These
investigations and his fierce individualism won him the admiration of Beat
writers such as Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs and caused polemics
with his artistic contemporaries Yves Klein, Giacometti and Jean Tinguely.
This publication will be the first English-language introduction to a key
figure of Europe's post-war avant-garde and cultural underground. Through
a combination of new essays and a key selection of primary sources, this
publication will foreground the artist's influence in contemporary art since
the 1960s - and it's accessible and thematic approach will expand the
audience for this book far beyond the specialist.