Artist’s CV
Kostas Spiropoulos
1952: Born in Patras
1970: Admission to the Medical School of the University of Athens, following examinations
1976: Degree in Medicine
1980: Ph.D in Medicine, University of Athens
1985: Visitor Assistant Professor in Medical School of Indiana University USA Attending of evening painting classes at Heron Art Institute of the same university
1989: Attending operations at the Lung Clinic of the Royal Brompton Hospital in London
1990: Pulmonology Professor at the Medical School of the University of Patras
2000-2008: Assistant Professor (Law No. 407) at the School of Fine Arts of the University of Ioannina, on “Visual Art Anatomy”
2019 Emeritus Professor of Medicine University of Patras
2020 Visiting Professor University of Cyprus
2023 Honorary doctor of Humanities Nicosia University
2023 Regular Member of Tiberina Academy In Rome
Key ideas that defined my life course:
– A free man is a good man.
– Since his creation, man has been producing culture like the spider weaves its web. The spider’s web does not pose a risk to the ecosystem, while human culture, in all probability, will cause irreparable damage to the ecosystem.
-The means we have to prevent this is philosophy, Art and Science. I found that I had the need to get involved with Art as well as with Science. I did it with as much honesty and faith there was in me. I never considered any cost or trouble. I loved my failures, because I learnt though them.
To me, medicine is extremely, incredibly fascinating as it attempts to rectify God’s failed experiment, addressing mortality and pain and possibly making life less distressing. Because, truly, life cannot aspire to the achievement of great happiness but to the achievement of as little suffering as possible, according to Schopenhauer. I enjoy art, because it is not so much about answering significant questions bur rather about reviewing given facts and values, mainly in the field of aesthetics, as a procedure that includes the interaction of reasoning and emotions. Thus, conventional views and forms and established expert opinions are revised. In specific, painting fascinates me because it creates forms that are a condensed culture and lifestyle statement. Painting, in its effort to “write” the world, comprehends it in a manner that reason, imagination and emotion can complete it and supersedes – even
though, temporarily – the despair caused by the certainty of self-cancellation. Below is an indicative list of painters and art historians who have referred to my work, as well as a list
of the solo and group exhibitions I have had to date. Note that the Italian Academy of Fine Arts features my portrait in a special volume on the representatives of modern European Painting, issued in 2016, on the occasion of the 400-year Rembrandt anniversary.
I am a member of the Chamber of Fine Arts of Greece.
