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Eleni Traganas
Award-winning Artist ELENI TRAGANAS has led a distinguished professional career as an international concert pianist. Her varied activities are listed in the millennium editions of Who's Who In The World, Who's Who Of American Women , and other biographical dictionaries.
Born and raised in New York City, she commenced her study of music and art at an early age, and by 12 was already a published composer. Soon after, she entered New York's legendary SCHOOL OF PERFORMING ARTS receiving special prizes in piano and conducting, and was being heard throughout New York's major radio networks performing her own compositions in her early teens. Dividing her activities between performing and painting, she subsequently received a scholarship to the prestigious JUILLIARD SCHOOL where she was awarded the Bachelor and Master of Music degrees. Postgraduate studies were undertaken abroad in Essen, Germany, under the guidance of some of the foremost musicians of the concert world who in turn inspired her in the great virtuoso tradition of their own mentors. She has also performed at the International Master Classes in Lucerne, Switzerland. Her deep affinity for the Russian repertoire has led to innumerable appearances in all Siberian and all Russian recitals and lectures in New York's Alice Tully Hall, Town Hall, Carnegie Recital Hall, London's Wigmore Hall, Berlin, Bonn, and many of the major music capitals of Europe, where she has also performed under the aegis of the US State Department, garnering the highest praise from the international press. Critics have unanimously applauded her "astonishing command and limitless range of emotion, combined in an overwhelmingly unique and individual style" (Bonn, Germany). With recordings and music publications to her credit, she has also regularly held seminars and lecture-demonstrations on Russian music both here and abroad. She is also a frequent contributor to various literary journals throughout the US.
Through the extensive traveling schedule involved with her concert career, she was fortunate to have made stops at many of the great museums of the world, and has spent much of her time researching, and learning from, the Master Collections in Paris, Berlin, Madrid, London, Brussels, Amsterdam, Odessa, and countless other important galleries.
With the exception of her studies in Art History and Life Drawing at Queens College of the City University of New York, ELENI TRAGANAS is largely self-taught, and it is the strict discipline in form, composition, and technique during her training as a classical musician that has helped to influence and shape her own individual style and vision as a creative artist.
Artist's Statement
"1 want to express the ineffable, the inexpressible, a longing for the infinite, through whatever means are at my disposal. My intensive studies in the realm of both visual art and through my international career as a performing artist have enabled me to appreciate the qualities of clarity, discipline, a sense of color harmony and balance, rhythmic density and perfection of technique. In any artistic medium, these translate into the requisite tools of one's craft. As a Realist Romanticist in my approach to both art and music, my ultimate vision is the same: To seize a timeless moment and illumine it with beauty."
Selected Exhibitions
The Broome Street Gallery, NY 1999, 2000, 2001
The Islip Art Museum, NY 2000
The Ridgewood Art Institute, NJ 2000
The National Arts Club, NY 1995,1996,1998,1999
The Newington-Cropsey Museum 1997
Saint John's University - Chung Cheng Gallery 1996, 1997
The Alliance Of Queens Artists 1996, 1997, 1998
The North East Watercolor Society 1996
Kent Art Association, CT 1996
Audubon Artists, Federal Hall, NY 1996
The Lever House Gallery, Park Avenue, NY 1996
The Art League of Long Island 1996
Community Arts Association, Bergen County, NJ 1996
The National Art League, Douglaston, NY 1996
Ursus Prints at The Carlyle Hotel
Presented by the American Society of Botanical Artists, 1996
The International Power Show, The New York Coliseum
Presented by the American Society of Botanical Artists
The Upstream Gallery, Dobbs Ferry, NY 1997, 1998
Awards & Prizes
The New Jersey Watercolor Society Award
The Sauter & Margulies Award for Excellence,
The Northeast Watercolor Society
Cynthia Goodgal Memorial Prize
First Prize for Watercolor, Chung Cheng Gallery, NY
People's Choice Best In Show Award,
Alliance of Queens Artists,
Honorable Mention, Lever House Gallery, NY
The New Jersey Watercolor Society Award
Artist Memberships
The American Society of Botanical Artists since 1995
Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club, Inc. since 1998
The Alliance of Queens Artists 1995-1998
Artist Pianist Services
(718) 899-3865