Asteriadis Aghinor

Showing an early inclination for drawing, he took his first lessons in Larissa from painter Christos Papamerkouriou and then in Athens from Erato Asprogeraka-Valvi. From 1915 to 1921, he studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts, under Georgios Roilos, Georgios Jakovides, Spyros Vikatos, Pavlos Mathiopoulos, and Nikolaos Lytras.

The year of his graduation he also began his exhibition activity, with his first solo exhibition in Larissa. More solo exhibitions and participations in group, national, and international exhibitions followed, including the Biennale of Venice (1934 and 1940), Sao Paulo and Alexandria (1959), as well as the exhibitions of groups “Techni” and “Stathmi,” of which he was a founding member. In 1925, he became member of the Greek Artists’ Association.

In 1961, his work was shown in a retrospective exhibition at the Athens Technology Institute and in 1976 at the National Gallery.

For a while, he worked for economic reasons for the advertising agency GEO and later taught free drawing at secondary school as well as public and private schools. Alongside with painting, he also copied Byzantine frescoes, painting murals in churches, designing mosaics and portable icons, and illustrating books. Engraving was another aspect of his creative career, including albums of lithographic reproductions, while during the German Occupation he published posters of engravings inspired by folk songs. In 1928, he published “Το σπίτι του Σβαρτς στα Αμπελάκια” (reprinted 1974), with his engravings from his tour of Thessaly, and in 1933 “Παιδικά σχέδια”, in collaboration with his friend, the painter Spyros Vassileiou, for which he received the Grand Prize for Publishing at the Paris World Fair (1937).

Including a great number of landscapes, his oeuvre also features nudes, portraits, and still lifes. He treats his subjects in an unmistakable personal style, blending elements from the Byzantine tradition, folk art, and naive painting with a distinctive use of perspective, while there is also some Cubist and Surrealist influence.