Marianna Katsoulidi, an Athens School of Fine Arts graduate, had the good fortune to be the daughter of an important painter and engraver, Takis Katsoulidis, and be nurtured in the midst of his creative environment.
However, while her father moved across spectra of multiple quests, both in painting and engraving, Marianna found her way in the context of an intense expressionism involving the human form, or better, the human face. The face is precisely the resultant force of soul expression, and the surrounding space accentuates its expressive dynamic.
Figural expressionism which, for example, found its circumstance in James Ensor, unveils the face – mask, the face of pain and many other emotional
gradations.
Marianna Katsoulidi – in a spontaneous writing context – overwhelms the visual surface with elements which serve the image’s structure: with colors, forms, graffiti type lettering, and amidst all these, loom faces of different expressions, like ghosts of a personal reality. On all occasions, important is the structure of the composition, the chromatic vibe, the intensity of expression and, in the end, the mystery which emerges from the totality of the image with the enigmatic character and the dynamic of imagination.
Marianna Katsoulidi experiences the reality of a modern, problematic and conflicting world, where man is bombarded by fragments of images, by figures, which – like in a dream – appear fragmented in the display of consciousness, resembling more explosions within the flow of all. The power of fantasy is combined with the understanding of the expressiveness of color, forms, figures. It is more about a subjective transcription of the subconscious spectrum of a creative person who is troubled about himself and the world, about man and his environment.

Prof. Stelios Lidakis
Director of the Museum of the City of Athens
(Vouros – Eftaxias Foundation)