Alekos Fassianos was born in Athens on Dec. 16, 1935. He studied violin at the Athens Conservatory and painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts from 1955 to 1960.
Shortly after his first exhibition in the early 1960s, he went to Paris on a French state scholarship to study lithography at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He ended up staying in Paris for 35 years.
Although some of his paintings, especially the early ones, were in a contemporary style, he mostly drew inspiration from Greek popular art and Ancient Greek mythology. He was also inspired by Byzantine themes, although his colorful paintings have little to do with Byzantine austerity. Besides painting and lithography, he also illustrated books, designed theater costumes and settings and dabbled in sculpture.
Fassianos was widely celebrated in Greece and many of his works adorn public spaces, including a mural at an Athens subway station. In France, he was made a commander of the Order of Arts and Letters and an officer of the Legion of Honor. He exhibited widely in Europe and Latin America. His last major exhibition was a 2004 retrospective in Athens.
Fassianos is survived by his wife, Mariza, and two daughters.
The Associated Press
Fassianos himself relates: “For five years I applied myself to drawing ancient heads and nude models. I can’t say I didn’t learn anything from this – quite the opposite.
Our teacher Moralis had an influence on us both as an artist and as a human being. We learned to observe the effects of darkness on light and vice versa as well as how objects changed shape as the light changed. We also learned to compare things. But I was always thinking of saints with their haloes, their staffs, their swords, their varied attire, and the red or white horses that jumped over flame-blowing dragons.
I was thinking less of the Cycladic figurines at the time.
I also liked Japanese art and Indian tantric painting. But I never felt the mysticism. I started painting people again in uniforms and ornaments in gardens. They were unmoving, they were expressionless and held flowers.
Later these small figures of people that I painted in uniforms began to dissolve, to become colored beings with flowers all around, sometimes pleasant looking, sometimes terrifying
And now the ones I paint hold flaming swords like the Byzantine saints. But they are untainted creatures from my imagination, just as they first issued from dark churches. I like red and blue volumes, but not abstraction.
Color should always have meaning!
-Alekos Fassianos, Athens 1964
Prominent Greek artist Fassianos laid to rest
Fassianos spent some of his formative years studying in France (AFP/LOUISA NIKOLAIDOU)
Chantal VALERY
Tue, January 18, 2022
Greek painter Alekos Fassianos, one of the country's greatest 20th century artists, was laid to rest Tuesday at a funeral in an Athens suburb attended by the prime minister, senior officials and hundreds of mourners.
The artist, who died at the age of 86, was buried in the cemetery of Papagou, the northern Athens district where he lived out his final years.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Culture Minister Lina Mendoni were among a few hundred people who attended the ceremony.
"He is with us. He will always be there," the artist's wife Mariza told AFP, standing next to her children Viktoria and Nikola.
"Alekos Fassianos was the painter of Greece, of Greek colour, of Greek authenticity," Mendoni told AFP at the funeral.
In a tribute to the artist Sunday, Mitsotakis said Fassianos had "generously given colour to (Greek) daily life" and that his work was "always balanced between realism and abstraction."
- Known around the world -
Born in Athens in 1935, Fassianos was best known for his distinctive brightly coloured cherubic figures, inspired by ancient Greek heroes and angels, and mostly done in blue and red.
"I like red and blue, but not in abstract form. Colour should always have meaning!" he wrote in 1964.
The grandson of a parish priest and son of a composer, Fassianos initially studied violin for 12 years.
He then enrolled at the Athens School of Fine Arts of the National Technical University of Athens under famed Greek master Yiannis Moralis.
In 1960 he received a scholarship from the French government to study lithography at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
Described by some admirers as a modern-day Matisse and by others as the Greek Picasso, his works, which included paintings, lithographs, ceramics and tapestries, have been shown around the world.
He also created costumes for the Greek national theatre and the ancient theatre of Epidaurus.
And Mendoni, in her tribute Sunday, noted that he had sold his works to fund archaeological excavation in the Cycladic island of Kea, his personal summer retreat.
While Fassianos resisted comparison with Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, he admired both artists, but insisted he had drawn on many different influences.
"Greekness has always been his inspiration, from mythology to contemporary Greece," his wife Mariza told AFP in an interview last month.
- A 'painter-philosopher' -
Oscar-winning French-Greek director Costa Gavras, a lifelong friend of the artist, remembered Fassianos was an "exemplary" artist and "painter philosopher", in comments to AFP.
The artist would "always be with us with his unique body of work", he added.
"He will always be present...in the hearts of all Greeks who loved him, and whom he loved back.
"To those who knew and loved him, he will always be remembered as a warm and luminous friend," Gavras said, remembering him as a gracious host.
He recalled how Fassianos enjoyed serving his guests sea urchins that he had collected from the beach and prepared himself "with the skill of a Greek fisherman".
But the artist was also a resolute critic of idiocy and vulgarity, Gavras added.
Fassianos was awarded France's Legion of Honour and was also an honorary member of the Russian academy of arts.
A museum dedicated to his work is to open in Athens this autumn.
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