He took his first lessons from Claus Frieslander in 1940. The same year he met Dimitris Pikionis and Nikos Chatzikyriakos-Ghika, who he considers to be his real teachers. From 1943 to 1949 he studied at the School of Fine Arts under Dimitrios Biskinis, Pavlos Mathiopoulos and Konstantinos Parthenis. On a scholarship from the State Scholarship Service he completed his studies at the School of Fine Arts of Paris (1953-1956) where he was taught the art of copperplate by E. Goerg.
Commencing his exhibition activity in 1948 with the organization of his first solo show, he has presented his work in solo, group, Panhellenies and international exhibitions of painting and engraving. Among others he participated in the Biennales of Sao Paolo in 1957 and 1965 and Alexandria in 1959 and the International Exhibitions of Engraving at Lugano in 1960 and Tokyo in 1964. In 1970, even though he was appointed the delegate of Greece to the Venice Biennale, he refused to participate because of the political situation in Greece. He has also taken part in the exhibitions of the group Junction A of which he has been a member since 1949 and Junction B. In 1983 his series Street Market was presented at the National Gallery which in 1999 organized a retrospective exhibition of his work.
Since 1951 he has worked as a lecturer to the Chair of Freehand Drawing at the Architectural School of the National Technical University while from 1958 to 1962 he taught at the Athenian Technological Institute. In 1958 he participated in the founding of the Free School of the Fine Arts (later the Vakalo Professional School of the Decorative Arts) where he taught until 1976 when he was elected professor at the School of Fine Arts. He remained in that position till 1991, having been elected Rector in 1989, and in 1993 he became a member of the Athens Academy.
Remaining faithful to figurative painting and fashioning a personal expressionistic style, he depicts scenes from everyday life, portraits, landscapes and still lifes, placing particular importance on the role of color and light. His artistic creation also includes engravings and wall paintings for public buildings and churches.
At the age of sixteen he departed from Corfu for Rome and a year later Paris. There he studied painting and engraving at the Grande Chaumiere and Julian Academies. In 1908 he returned to Greece to do his military service and the following year took part in the exhibition of the Youth Group at the Zappeion Hall and then returned, via Munich, to Paris. In 1912- 1913 he took part in the Balkan Wars and the Greek government appointed him, along with the painter Nikolaos Androutsos and the sculptor Konstantinos Dimitriadis, a representative to the Conference of Artists in Paris. In 1914, when he had already returned to Paris, he presented his first solo exhibition in Athens at the Parnassos Hall. He made many trips in Greece and in 1918 presented a series of scenes from the front in Northern Epirus. Definitive for his systematic involvement with engraving was his acquaintance with the engraver Andre Dunoyer de Segonzac in 1921. He stayed in Paris until 1933, presenting solo shows and taking part, primarily with paintings, in group exhibitions both in France, where in 1925 he received a gold medal at the Parisian Exhibition of Decorative Arts, and in Greece. The publication of his first album in 1922, with twelve views of the monasteries on Mt. Athos, had a preface by Charles Diehl and by 1939 quite a number of other albums were published by large Parisian publishers. In 1985 the Yakinthos gallery had a retrospective exhibition of his paintings and engravings.
An artist with a wealth of engraving work, he is considered the founder of etching in Greece. He was deeply involved with the landscape, both in his painting and engraving, where he is distinguished for his classicistic point of view, delicacy of line and compositional clarity, bearing witness to a relationship with the idyllic French landscapes of the 18th and 19th century.
He gave up his studies at the University School of Ecomomic and Commercial Science (1950-1952) and enrolled at the Athens School of Fine Arts under professors Yannis Moralis and Spyros Papaloukas (1952-1958). From 1959 to 1961 he was head of the artistic division of the Greek Organization of Handicrafts. In 1961 he participated in the founding of Art Group A, and was in the forefront of its activities until its disbanding in 1967. In 1972 he received a grant from the Ford Foundation. In 1974 he became a member of the Group for Communication and Education in Art. In 1976 he was elected full professor at the Athens School of Fine Arts to the Chair of Painting, where he taught until 1997, while from 1980 to 1982 he was rector of the School. He has presented his works in solo and group exhibitions, and has also published studies concerned with theoretical questions in art. In 1990 the Macedonian Center of Contemporary Art organized a retrospective exhibition of his work.
Color values, an elliptic morphoplastic vocabulary and fragmentariness are the distinguishing features of his painting, which has a good deal in common with abstract expressionism.
He studied painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts (1949-1953) in the Andreas Georgiadis workshop, but abandoned his studies in the fourth year. He then trained under Fotis Kontoglou whom he worked with decorating churches.
He has presented his work in solo, Panhellenies and group exhibitions in Greece and abroad, while in 1989 a retrospective was presented at the National Gallery.
In addition to painting, he has been involved with engraving, as well as the decoration of churches in Greece and abroad with wall paintings, such as the monastery of Chevetrogne in Belgium and the church of the Orthodox Center of the Patriarchate in Chambesy, Geneva, in which he has combined the elements of tradition with a personal attitude toward the religious painting of Orthodox churches. An artist with broad intellectual interests, he has also been involved with the writing and illustration of books and has published many texts in magazines as well as in the booklets for his solo exhibitions, while during the period 1972-1974 he published the magazine “Κάνιστρο”.
An anthropocentric painter, he has focused his interest on landscape, but one in which the human figure is dominant. His works, which combine a realistic and anti-realistic style with elements taken from both Byzantine and folk tradition, frequently move on a surrealistic level as well and reflect his experiences filtered through a nostalgic cast of mind.
After his mother’s suicide in 1912, Rene Magritte moved with his family to Charleroi, where he took drawing and painting lessons. In October 1916, he enrolled in the Brussels Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied with Emile Vandamme-Sylva, Gisbert Combaz and Constantine Montald; he also took up literature courses with Georges Eekhoud. In 1919, he came into contact with the members of the Belgian avant-garde and developed relations with young writers of Dada and Surrealist affinities, such as the poet and art dealer E.L.T. Mesens, with whom he began his publishing activity in 1925, with the magazines “Oesophage” and “Marie”. He also published the magazines “Carte d’apres nature” (1952-1957) and “Rhetorique” (1961-1964). The negative reception of his work in his first solo exhibition (1927) was one of the reasons why he moved to Paris, where he lived until 1930. During his three-year stay, he became an active member of the Surrealist movement and associated with Andre Breton and his circle. In 1945, he became connected with the Communist Party but soon disassociated himself. In 1956, he received the Guggenheim Award.
In 1927, his first solo exhibition was held at Le Centaure Gallery, Paris. Solo exhibitions of his work followed in various cities, and retrospective exhibitions were mounted in 1960-1969 in the United States, Germany, Holland and Sweden as well as in Dusseldorf and Brussels in 1996 and 1998. He also participated in a great number of group events as well as in all major Surrealist exhibitions, such as the International Surrealist Exhibition in London (1936).
In 1925, inspired by Giorgio de Chirico’s “Song Of Love”, Rene Magritte turned to Surrealism and became one of its greatest exponents. A short period of work inspired by Cubism and Futurism had come before that, and in the 1940’s he shortly experimented with impressionist painting. His oeuvre is distinguished for its poetic character and an atmosphere of mystery, achieved by using techniques such as distorting scale and blending realistically rendered images with apparently unrelated images, introduced in unlikely contexts. Moreover, a dream-like quality and the reversal of established relations inspire disquiet and incertitude in viewers.
He studied under Panos Sarafianos and Yannis Moralis. He exhibited for the first time in 1962 at the University of Munich and since then has presented his works in solo (Nees Morfes, 1974, 1983, 1987, 1993, 1999) and group exhibitions in Greece and abroad. Painting, performances and happenings are all part of the artist’s creative work and he has also participated as an actor in performances of modern music; he has added music to painting exhibitions and presented his own work supplemented with sound and motion. Meeting the composer Yannis Christou and working with him has exercised a definitive influence. In 1981 he became involved with stage design for the first time. One of the founding members of the Center for the Visual Arts he has been active in its events.
In his work elements of reality are reshaped into new and original painted forms through the action of the imagination or the unconscious.
In 1920, still a school pupil, she enrolled in the Athens School of Fine Arts and in 1924 was admitted to Thomas Thomopoulos’s sculpture workshop, in which she studied until 1928. Two years later, she left for Paris, where she studied at Thanassis Apartis’s workshop first and then at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere with Robert Wlerick. Returning to Athens in 1934, she established her first workshop, which was destroyed in air raids during the German Occupation. From 1941, she taught plastic, pottery and history of art at the Papastrateios Applied Arts State School and from 1960 free drawing at Hill School. She received the Silver Medal of the City of Paris in 1966, and in 1980 the Bronze Medal of the International Women’s Education Federation.
She had solo exhibitions of her work and participated in group exhibitions, including Panhellenic exhibitions, various Salons d’Automne in Paris, the Cairo International Exhibition (1947), the Alexandria Biennale (1963 and 1965), the Budapest Biennale (1971) as well as exhibitions of the Greek Women Artists Association, of which she was member.
Her familiarity with the Greek plastic tradition and her acquaintance with the work of the post-Rodin French school, especially that of Aristide Maillol, were major factors which helped shape her style, characterized by a restrained realism with idealistic or romantic tendencies. Having as their exclusive subject the human figure, her works are busts, but above all standing, seated or half-reclining female figures. These female figures, with their rounded forms, their well-delineated outlines and calm postures reflect Maillol’s plastic approach, which Chryssochoidi adapted to her own temperament. Apart from free sculptures, she also produced medals and reliefs on subjects including fish, birds, plants, insects and boats.