(b Arta, 23 April 1916). Greek painter, printmaker, illustrator, stage designer and decorative artist. From 1931 to 1936 he studied painting and printmaking at the Higher School of Fine Arts in Athens under Konstantinos Parthenis and Yannis Kefallinos (1893-1957). As soon as he graduated he participated in the exhibition of Greek printmakers that was organized in Czechoslovakia in 1936. The same year, on a scholarship from the Academy of Athens, he went to Rome and then to Paris to study at the Ecole Sup?rieure des Beaux-Arts and the Ecole des Arts et M?tiers. He returned to Athens in 1940, when he participated in the last pre-war panhellenic exhibition, in which he was awarded the first prize. During the period of the German occupation (1941-4) he started painting portraits to earn his living. In these his restricted palette and the opposition of light and shadow with as little half-tone as possible reveal his concern with the flattening of form and space. His post-war canvases are painted with a directness of execution and solidly modelled forms. His concern with the structure of form led him gradually to geometrical compositions. In 1949 he was among the founder-members of the art group Armos, which aimed to develop a modern idiom under the influence of the Ecole de Paris. He had promoted this idea since becoming professor of painting at the Higher School of Fine Arts in Athens (1947-84). From 1958 to 1962 he designed the linear composition of an antique procession, executed on marble, for the fa?ades of the Hilton Hotel, Athens. After the 1960s he painted monumental compositions with archaic forms inspired by Classical Attic gravestones. His leitmotif was the female figure represented with a strong frontal light within geometrical spaces with simple tonal contrasts. In his later works his concern for abstraction led him to the painting of monumental archaic forms and linear patterns. He was also actively involved in engraving, book illustration and stage design for over 30 dramas and ballets. He designed posters, building fa?ades and interiors as well as a large number of compositions in stone, ceramic and wood for public buildings, and tapestries for which he received the gold medal at the Internationalen Handwerkersmesse in Munich in 1973. He participated in numerous panhellenic and international group exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale (1958), and had many one-man shows in Greece.
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