The sculptor, painter, and engraver Ioanna Spiteri-Veropoulou was born in Smyrna in 1920 and passed away in Athens in 2000.
After a brief period of study at the Athens Law School, she studied sculpture at the Athens School of Fine Arts, in the studio of Michalis Tombros.
She was the wife of the art critic and art historian Tony P. Spiteris.
In 1949, she became a member of the artistic group ‘Stathmi’.
She lived with her husband in Venice (1958–1963) and Paris (1963–1975) before returning to Athens in the late 1970s.
From a realistic phase with anthropocentric references, she moved toward Abstract Expressionism, and by the late 1950s, toward the simplification and stylization of forms. Ultimately, in the 1960s, she arrived at purely geometric shapes, using metal as her primary artistic medium. The relationship between structures and space became a particular concern during the final phase of her career, in which the dialogue between architecture and sculpture was explored through the use of new materials (steel, wood, plexiglass). Significant among her works are her sculptures composed of modular units, as well as her abstract ideographic paintings.
She presented her work in many solo and group exhibitions in Greece and abroad, including the ‘Stathmi’ group exhibitions (1950–1952), Parisian Salons, and exhibitions in Montreal, Milan, and New York. She participated in the Carrara Sculpture Biennale in 1962 (2nd prize) and the São Paulo Biennale in 1963 (2nd prize).
A retrospective exhibition was organized by the Teloglion Foundation (‘Ioanna-Giovanna-Jeanne Spiteris’, March 10 – July 12, 2023), which was subsequently transferred to Trieste (Carlo Schmidl Museum – Palazzo Gopcevich).
During the 1st Art Symposium held in Thessaloniki in 1984, the Spiteris couple donated to the Teloglion Foundation the entire archive of Tony Spiteris, his library, their art collection, as well as the complete oeuvre of Ioanna Spiteri’s paintings and sculptures.