Artist’s CV
Artist’s Curriculum Vitae
Spyropoulos Giannis
Giannis Spyropoulos was born on March 12 in Pylos, Messinia.
He studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts under Spyridon Vikato, Umberto Argyros and Epaminondas Thomopoulos (1933 – 1938).
In 1938, on a scholarship from the Academy of Athens, he went to Paris, where he continued his studies at the School of Fine Arts with Charles Guerin and in independent academies. He returned to Greece in 1940 and later began to exhibit his works in solo, group and international exhibitions in Greece and abroad (Alexandria Biennale 1955, Sao Paolo Biennale 1957, Kassel Documentary 1964, 1975).
In 1960 he was awarded the U.N.E.S.C.O. Prize at the 30th Venice Biennale. In 1961 he was awarded the Gold Medal of the city of Ostend, Belgium, in 1966 the Order of the Phoenix in Athens and in 1978 the Gottfried von Herder Prize in Vienna. In November 1990, a few months after his death, the Yannis and Zoe Spyropoulou Foundation was established, which aims to collect, study, present and exploit the painting work of G. Spyropoulos but also to support young painters.
A classic of Abstraction, Spyropoulos proceeded, consistently in the development of his formal-plastic quest, from figurative rendering to abstraction and, finally, to purely abstract writing. From the Sesanian teachings and the schematized form he moved on to geometric structure and building through colour, to be gradually led to the combined use of heterogeneous materials and the technique of oil painting, the juxtaposition of large dark and smaller bright colour surfaces, and to end, in his last works on paper, with simplicity and interiority.
