Greek painter Alekos Fassianos, who helped renew Greek painting, died on Sunday. He leaves behind a body of work that mixes ancient and Byzantine art with scenes of popular life. He had not painted since 2019, suffering from a degenerative disease.
Hardly had the death of the Greek painter Alekos Fassianos been announced in Athens than, on social networks, representations of his paintings were posted by fellow citizens of all ages and the sites of the newspapers retraced the course of the ‘artist. It is a real popular tribute that took place on the Web where images in ocher and blue colors have flourished, representing a couple in front of the sea, a smoker or even a boy, hair in the wind. Died in his sleep, at 86, the painter was, without doubt, one of the best known of his generation, but also internationally. “Greecity”, “Mediterraneanity” : these are the words that come back to describe his work.
Poems and other texts
“Fassianos was very inspired by ancient and Byzantine Greece, on the one hand, and everyday life, on the other”, explains Aris Lefakis, owner of the Lefakis Gallery, where works by the master are on offer. He who knew him well continues: “He brought antiquity into everyday life.” To which the painter Eleni Pavlopoulou adds: “Along with other artists of his generation, they challenged academic Greek art while returning to the roots of Greek painting.” Among these other artists, Yiannis Moralis with whom he studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts from 1956 to 1960.
Born in 1935 in Athens, it was then in France that he continued his apprenticeship. He studied lithography at the Beaux-Arts in Paris between 1960 and 1963. He returned there in exile during the dictatorship of the colonels. This lover of colors and words, who also writes poems and other texts, meets there Louis Aragon who comments on his works, Matisse and Picasso whom he admires… France had become his second homeland – he was made an officer of the Legion of Honor and Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters in 2020.
However, unlike Moralis who follows the paths of abstract art, Fassianos, a “continued, persistently, to do what he wanted: to mix elements of antiquity with everyday scenes in the naive form”, Aris Lefakis analysis. Refusing all constraints, Fassianos traced without shadow or perspective his characters drawn from mythology, Byzantine or naive art. His drawings have become album covers, book covers or even theater posters.
“Cultural Heritage”
“He always believed that an artist should create with what he knows,” observed his wife to AFP earlier this year. He said: “What I know is Greece, the sky is blue, so I paint in blue, I know the Greek islands, the sea, the waves…” And it is so “that he made the local international”, suggests the gallery owner. Who immediately adds: “France helped him lead this career and gain an international reputation. After he was successful in France, the Greek galleries wanted to have him. Exhibited during his lifetime in the greatest museums in the world, he also saw his paintings hung at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, at the Maeght Foundation or at the Pinacoteca in Athens.
In the tribute that the Greek Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, paid on Sunday evening to the painter and the poet, he explained that he was “always in balance between realism and abstraction”. Former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras expressed his “deep gratitude for the cultural heritage that Alekos Fassionos leaves us”. A heritage which, ostensibly, has permeated the Greek popular imagination.
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