(Athens) The Greek painter Alekos Fassianos, known for his characters from Greek mythology and folklore, died on Sunday at the age of 86, his daughter announced to AFP.
Posted at 5:05 p.m.
Alekos Fassianos, bedridden for several months at his home in Papagou, in the suburbs of Athens, died “in his sleep” following a long illness, said Viktoria Fassianou.
The multi-talented colorist shared his life between Greece and France, where he studied lithography at the National School of Fine Arts and rubbed shoulders with writers and painters, like Louis Aragon, Matisse and Picasso. whom he greatly admired.
“All the work of Fassianos, the colors that fill his canvases, the multidimensional forms that dominate his paintings, breathe Greece”, reacted the Minister of Culture Lina Mendoni, who hailed in a press release “one of the main contemporaries to have painted Hellenism”.
He had turned 86 on October 25, but he had put down his brush in 2019, suffering from a degenerative disease, we learned in the fall when meeting his family.
His daughter, who chairs the company Fassianos Estates, and his wife Mariza Fassianou then announced to AFP the opening of a museum in his name in the fall of 2022 in an old building in the center of Athens, completely redesigned by the artist with his architect friend Kyriakos Krokos.
“In balance between realism and abstraction”
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis paid tribute on Sunday evening to the painter and the poet, “always in balance between realism and abstraction”.
Fassianos “leaves us a precious legacy”, he said, confident that the multi-talented artist had recently called for facing the pandemic with “solidarity, love and education”. Because “in most of his creations, man is in the spotlight”.
Fassianos, who before Paris had studied at the National School of Fine Arts in Athens, is known for his paintings and lithographs, exhibited around the world, where we find the cyclist he met as a child on his way to the beach, the hair straightened by the wind as described in his readings of mythology, the fish of Kea, his favorite island, the round waves as in the Odyssey, the bird with outstretched wings, so many emblematic signatures of his work .
In line with Matisse or Picasso, Fassianos nevertheless defended himself from having been inspired by one artist rather than another and preferred to claim “77” influencers, according to his wife.
Refusing all constraints, Fassianos traced, without shadow or perspective, his characters drawn from mythology, Byzantine or naive art.
“Greekness” in inspiration
From Paris to Munich, from Tokyo to Sao Paolo, the works of Fassianos have toured the world. They can be seen in particular at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, at the Maeght Foundation or at the Pinacoteca in Athens.
France, his second homeland, awarded him the distinction of Officer of the Legion of Honor and Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters, awarded in Athens in 2020.
But “Greekness has always been his inspiration, from mythology to contemporary Greece,” said his wife.
“He always believed that an artist should create with what he knows,” she observed. 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…”.
During a visit to his home by AFP, his daughter explained that he had created everything in his house.
“Everything was designed and created by him, by hand, little by little like a little paradise,” she said, proudly pointing to the curtain rods, the windows adorned with a wrought iron sun, the mosaics on the floor or again the stair railing in sculpted bamboo leaves.
Fassianos worked on the floor or scribbled on the corner of a table. And “he destroyed what he didn’t like”, sighed his wife, “I cried, but he knew better than me what had to be kept”.