The Greek painter Alekos Fassianos died on Sunday January 16 at the age of 86, his daughter announced to Agence France-Presse (AFP). Bedridden for several months at his home in Papagou, in the suburbs of Athens, the artist died ” in his sleep “ following a long illness, said Viktoria Fassianou.
The multi-talented colourist shared his life between Greece and France, where he studied lithography at the National School of Fine Arts and rubbed shoulders with writers and painters, like Louis Aragon, Matisse and Picasso. whom he greatly admired.
He had turned 86 on October 25, but he had put down his brush in 2019, suffering from a degenerative disease. His daughter, who chairs the company Fassianos Estates, and his wife Mariza Fassianou announced to AFP, at the end of 2021, the opening of a museum in his name in the fall of 2022 in an old building in the center of Athens, completely redesigned by the artist with his architect friend Kyriakos Krokos.
Colors and shapes that “breathe Greece”
“All of Fassianos’ work, the colors that fill his canvases, the multidimensional shapes that dominate his paintings, breathe Greece”, reacted the Minister of Culture, Lina Mendoni, who welcomed in a press release “one of the main contemporaries to have painted Hellenism”.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis also paid tribute on Sunday evening to the painter and poet, “always in balance between realism and abstraction”. Fassianos “Leaves us a precious legacy”, he said, confident that the multi-talented artist had recently called for dealing with the pandemic with “solidarity, love and education”. Car “in most of his creations, the man is in the spotlight”.
Fassianos, who before Paris had studied at the National School of Fine Arts in Athens, is known for his canvases and lithographs, exhibited throughout the world, where we find the cyclist he met as a child on his way to the beach, the hair straightened by the wind as described in his readings of mythology, the fish of Kea, his favorite island, the round waves as in the Odyssey, the bird with outstretched wings, so many emblematic signatures of his work .
Works that have traveled the world
In line with Matisse or Picasso, Fassianos nevertheless denied having been inspired by one artist rather than another and preferred to claim « 77 » influencers, according to his wife. Refusing all constraints, Fassianos traced, without shadow or perspective, his characters drawn from mythology, Byzantine or naive art.
From Paris to Munich, from Tokyo to Sao Paolo, his works have toured the world. They can be seen in particular at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, at the Maeght Foundation or at the Pinacoteca in Athens.
France, his second homeland, awarded him the distinction of Officer of the Legion of Honor and Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters, in Athens in 2020. But “Greekness has always been his inspiration, from mythology to contemporary Greece”, said his wife.
“He always believed that an artist should create with what he knows”, she observed. He said : “What I know is Greece, the sky is blue, so I paint in blue, I know the Greek islands, the sea, the waves…”.
Fassianos worked on the floor or scribbled on the corner of a table. And “He destroyed what he didn’t like”sighed his wife, “I was crying, but he knew better than me what to keep”.
