The Greek colorist multi-talented admirer of Matisse and Picasso, has shared his time between his home country and France. He died in Athens on Sunday at the age of 86, following a long illness, said his daughter.
Le Monde with AFP
Greek painter Alekos Fassianos died Sunday, Jan. 16, at the age of 86 years, announced his daughter to Agence France-Presse (AFP). Bedridden for months at his home in Papagou, a suburb of Athens, the artist died “in his sleep” following a long illness, said Viktoria Fassianou.
colorist multitalented shared his life between Greece and France, where he studied lithography at the National School of Fine Arts and coasted writers and painters, like Louis Aragon, Matisse and Picasso he greatly admired.
He had 86 years on 25 October, but he laid his brush in 2019, suffering from a degenerative disease. Her daughter who chairs the company Fassianos Estates and his wife Mariza Fassianou announced to AFP, at year end 2021, the opening of a museum in his name in fall 2022 in an old building in the center of Athens, redesigned by the artist with his friend architect Kyriakos Krokos.
colors and forms that “breathe Greece”
“All the work of Fassianos, colors that fill his paintings, multidimensional forms that dominate his paintings exude Greece,” responded the minister of culture, Lina Mendoni, who praised in a statement “the a major contemporaries have painted Hellenism “.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis also paid tribute Sunday night to the painter and the poet, “always in balance between realism and abstraction.” Fassianos “leaves us a precious heritage”, has he said, confident that the multi-talented artist had recently called to deal with the pandemic with “solidarity, love and education.” Because “in most of his creations, man is honored.”
Fassianos that before Paris had studied at the National School of Fine Arts of Athens, is known for his paintings and lithographs, exhibited throughout the world, where we find that the cyclist crossed in child going to the beach, the hair straightened by the wind as described in his reading of mythology, Kea fish, his favorite island, round waves like in the Odyssey, the bird with outstretched wings, so many iconic signatures . his work
Works that have been around the world
In the line of Matisse or Picasso, Fassianos is nevertheless denied having been inspired by an artist over another and preferred to claim of “77” influencers, according to his wife. Refusing all constraints, Fassianos drew free of shadows and perspective, characters drawn from mythology, Byzantine art or naive.
From Paris to Munich from Tokyo to Sao Paolo, his works have been around the world. They can be seen especially in modern art museum in Paris, at the Maeght Foundation or the art gallery in Athens.
France, his second home, handed him the distinction of Officer of the Legion of Honor and Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters in Athens in 2020. But “grécitude has always been his inspiration , from mythology to contemporary Greece, “said his wife.
“He always believed that an artist has to create with what he knows,” she observed. He said: “I know this is Greece, the sky is blue, so blue I paint, I know the Greek islands, the sea, the waves …”
.
Fassianos working on the floor or scribbled on the corner of a table. And “he destroyed what he did not like,” sighed his wife, “I cried, but he knew better than I what to keep.”