An artful life

From Athens by way of New York, internationally acclaimed artist Maria Andriopoulos Hall now makes her home in Bristol

By Christy Nadalin
Posted 1/5/25

Maria Andriopoulos Hall has spent her entire career — her entire life, in fact — as a working artist. She has also been a wife, to the late Gunnar Hall, who passed away in April 2024, and …

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An artful life

From Athens by way of New York, internationally acclaimed artist Maria Andriopoulos Hall now makes her home in Bristol

Posted

Maria Andriopoulos Hall has spent her entire career — her entire life, in fact — as a working artist. She has also been a wife, to the late Gunnar Hall, who passed away in April 2024, and a mother to two sons and a daughter. But her work, served by her incredible, innate talent, has always been the creation of works of art.

Born in Athens to parents who were dual Greek and U.S. citizens, she moved to the United States for good at age 9, after World War II left Greece struggling to recover. She spent the next several years in Manhattan, then attended some high school in Long Beach, Calif., before beginning at the Art Students League of New York at age 15. She began painting with a teacher who immediately recognized her talent.

“When she was still a teenager, she did a whole series pastels,” said her daughter, Ingrid Johnson. “I have them all framed in my house, and you would never believe that it was a teenager that did those….she is just naturally an artist. I don't imagine her doing anything else.”

Initially, Hall focused her craft on painting but soon discovered an affinity for sculpture. She had the opportunity to study under famed American sculptor Richard Stankiewicz, whose work is on exhibit in several renowned institutions including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Carnegie Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, among others. Though she earned her master in Fine Arts in both painting and sculpture from SUNY Albany, she would spend much of her career focused on sculpture, mostly, but not exclusively, stainless and corten steel abstract works that are created by cutting, then welding the metal.

A welder at heart

The has worked in wood, molded plaster and concrete, and chiseled marble. “But once I learned to weld, I just stayed with welding,” said Hall. “That's what I wanted to be doing.” Stainless steel emerged as her preferred medium; in addition to welding, the flat surfaces of each stainless sculpture are polished smooth with a grinder that allows each outdoor pice to brilliantly light and clouds, when the weather cooperates.

Each piece took Hall a significant amount of time. In her heyday, working full time, a small sculpture could take a month; and larger, outdoor pice could take many. “The big ones, they take much more time,” Hall said. “I used to work consistently, and so I produced.”

According to her artist statement in a catalog from one of her many outdoor exhibitions and installations, her sculptures “are abstract works concerned with the interrelationship of form and space. I try to develop strong, simple, sculptural images that are dynamic compositions, which move one emotionally. The proportion, scale, and progression of the different elements are intended to create an enigmatic, yet complete whole.

From the late 1960’s to 2016, Hall lived, worked, and raised her family in upstate New York. Her work has been shown at dozens of one-person and juried exhibitions, and is in the permanent collections of several museums, universities, and private collections, including the SUNY Albany, N.Y.; Saratoga Art Center, N.Y.; William Patterson University, N.J.; and Hope Park, Ill.

She admits that she has not counted the artworks that she has created over her lengthy career, though she does try to keep track of her most significant pieces as they are occasionally sold and transferred. Some of her favorites she keeps at home, and her children all hold on to several as well.

A return to painting

Hall hung up her blowtorch around 2010, and then she and Gunnar moved to Bristol in 2016. But she did not stop creating. She put together a book of her work, Mono-Type Prints of Maria Andriopoulos Hall (2019) which joined an earlier work, Sculptures of Maria Andriopoulos Hall (2012). Both are in the library collection of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery as well as the American Art Museum Library.

Though she has worked in all types of mediums, monotype, be it acrylic or watercolor, is her preferred. Like with sculpture, her inspiration comes first through a drawing. “They are all taken from the same source,” said Hall. “My drawings. Sometimes I made them into sculptures and sometimes I made them in to monotypes.”

Since moving to Bristol, Hall has been painting — a lot. She created a full body of work which she completed last year; some framed, most not, and most have not been shown. According to Johnson, she has finished close to 20 paintings in her time here in Bristol.

Hall didn’t do much painting in 2024, having completed the body of work she had devoted herself to for the previous 7 years. “It had kind of a natural ending, she sort of completed it,” said Johnson. “When you're the artist, you know when you’re done with the work.”

A monotype, from the Greek word for one, is by definition an artwork that is only printed once. It’s a fitting analogy for an artist as uniquely gifted as Hall. “I guess you can repeat it if you want,” Hall said. “But it would be a little bit faded, you know? Just not as brilliant.”

Maria Andriopoulos Hall

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