Artist’s CV
George Varlamos was born in Paros, in 1922. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts and his teacher was Yiannis Kefallinos, with whom he lived a total of 11 years as a partner. In the 1950s he studied on scholarship at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris (engraving at the Camis workshop), as well as the art of the stamp at the Estienne Technical College.
He is equally known as a painter and an engraver. A deep connoisseur of the secrets of classical engraving, he is perhaps the only one, apart from Galanis, who equally cultivated all its types – copper engraving, wood engraving, lithography -, creating an impressive work in terms of volume and semantic integration. Having studied deeply and persistently the ways of faithful rendering of the most diverse materials (flesh, fabric, plants) with the most diverse means (oils, watercolors, engraving) he ends up, through an abstract process, in a painting that conveys the deepest essence of nature without obvious details and in an engraving, where the most brilliant colors are present using only black.
In addition to the countless paintings and engravings he created, he has artistically edited or illustrated, with engravings or drawings, more than 200 books, contributing to the development of the art of the book in our country.
He has also designed dozens of posters of social content.
Of this voluminous production, only the Ten White Likyths are mentioned, a monumental edition worked on by Kefallinos and Montessando’s students, Damianakis and Varlamos, as well as the luxurious three-volume edition of Sophocles’ tragedies (Paris, 1973) illustrated with 48 watercolours. .
He took part and was awarded in international exhibitions (Moscow, Belgrade, Leipzig, Paris, Lugano etc.), while for his entire work he was honored by the Academy of Athens in 1995.
