Xenakis Kosmas

He studied architecture at the National Technical University (1942-1948) and in 1942-1943 attended lessons at the Athens School of Fine Arts. From 1955 to 1956, on a scholarship from the French government, he did post-graduate work at the research center C.S.T.B. in Paris, investigating the materials and techniques of building. His artistic education was completed by trips to Greece and America (1970-1971) made possible by a grant from the Ford Foundation.

He started to exhibit in 1948 and presented his work in solo, Panhellenies and group exhibitions of painting and sculpture in Greece and abroad, such as the Alexandria Biennale of 1965 and the Brussels Europalia of 1982. In 1968 he was proposed as Greece’s representative to the Venice Biennale but in the end he refused to participate. In 1957 he held his first solo show in Athens and in 1990 a number of his paintings were presented at the National Gallery.

In the beginning he was a figurative painter, doing portraits, genre scenes, interiors, and allegorical and mythological subjects. Later he moved on to geometric abstraction and created compositions characterized by their special sensitivity to color combinations. His sculptural work was usually combined with architecture and includes relief compositions and groups made of concrete, marble and polyester and found in private dwellings, apartment buildings and public edifices in Greece and abroad. He also did architectural and town-planning studies and published a number of texts in magazines. In the context of his broader artistic activity, he was also involved with stage design, while in 1968 and 1970 participated in the International Week of Modern Music with a film and a multiart presentation. In 1980, at the behest of the Ministry of Culture, he composed and recorded a multiart play which combined dance, music, cinema and the written word.