Sorongas Sotiris

He studied painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts (1955-1961) under Yannis Moralis and, for a year, took lessons in icon painting at the School’s applied arts workshop. In 1972, on a grant from the Ford Foundation, he travelled to New York, Chicago, London and Milan to familiarize himself with what was then current in modern art. The same year he organized his first solo exhibition at the Hilton gallery, having already started to exhibit in 1962. He has also presented his work in solo and group exhibitions in Greece and abroad, among which are the Sao Paolo Biennale of 1981, the Brussels Europalia in 1982 and the Engraving Biennale at Baden-Baden in 1983.

He was a founding member of the League of Modern Art and a member of the Group for Communication and Education in Art and participated on the editorial committee of the Greek magazine Σπείρα. Also interested in art on a theoretical level, he has published articles in newspapers and magazines, a selection of which appeared in 1992 in a book entitled, Περιθώρια-αναφορές σε προβλήματα του εικαστικού χώρου (Margins-References to Problems of Visual Space). Since 1965 he has taught drawing and color at the Architectural School of the National Technical University.

In his painting, which is figurative but at the same time moves on a transcendental level, and outside a series of idealized female portraits and another one with horses, he usually produces landscapes, deserted and silent in which, on a white background, rocks, pieces of wood and ruins are the dominant elements, alluding to the passage of time, deterioration and abandonment.