The artist Chryssa Vardea-Mavromichali—known simply as Chryssa—grew up in the lush Mani Peninsula of Southern Greece. She was part of a renowned academic family that moved in the same circles as the Greek poet and novelist Nikos Kazantzakis. In 1953, an art critic stumbled upon Chryssa’s paintings and suggested that her family send her to Paris, to study at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière alongside Andre Bréton and Max Ernst. A year later, at age 21, she left the Surrealists behind and set sail for the States, where she moved between California and New York during the decades that followed. The California Light and Space Movement was brewing, and Chryssa switched from painting to sculpture, activating her work through manipulations of light. This retrospective illuminates the artist, who died in 2013 at age 79. —Elena Clavarino