gli Artisti
Alexandros Fassianos
Born in Athens in 1935. Studied violin at the Athens Odeon and painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts (1956-1960, workshop of Y. Moralis). Passionately interested in ancient Greek vase-painting and Byzantine icon-painting. Attended courses in lithography at the Paris Ecole des beaux-arts under Clairin and Dayez, financed by a grant from the French state (1962-1964). Settled in Paris in 1966, and since 1974 has divided his time between Paris and Athens. Since 1959, the year of his first solo exhibition, in Athens, has held more than seventy individual exhibitions in Athens, Thessaloniki, Paris, Munich, Tokyo, Hamburg, Zurich, Milan, Beirut, Stockholm, London and elsewhere. Has participated in numerous group exhibitions and high-profile international events around the world, most notably the Salon comparaisons (Paris 1970), the S΄o Paulo Biennale (1971), the Venice Biennale (1972) and the Baden-Baden Graphics Biennale (1985). Has also been involved in engraving, poster design and stage design, collaborating with the Athens National Theatre (America, by Kafka, 1975, Eleni by Euripides, 1976, The Birds by Aristophanes, 1978, etc.). He has been commissioned to illustrate a number of books, both in Greece and abroad, of works by celebrated poets and writers such as O. Elitis, L. Aragon, G. Apollinaire, K. Tachtsis, C. Cavafis, A. Empeirikos, G. Ritsos, V. Vassilikos. His work also features in special art publications: albums with architectural vistas, views of cities, etc. He has also published writing of his own, both poetry and prose. Four films have been made about his work, for both French and Greek television, and studies of his work have been published.
Artistic Biography
The artist's personal
style began to take shape in the early 1960's, and his three basic themes remain
unchanged throughout the course of his career: man, nature, the environment. His
studies in Greek civilization and his involvement in engraving and graphic arts have
both influenced his painting. One of the most profound influences on Fassianos has
been the way in which G. Tsarouchis approached the Greek heritage, reinterpreting in
his own way the vexed question of the Greek identity. He was also influenced by
Tsarouchis' choice of subject matter: ordinary people in the urban setting of Athens
between the wars. Fassianos' earliest works are dominated by the figure of the
military officer, with his plump, florid cheeks, the dazzling braid of his uniform
and the laughable self-importance of his manner. Gradually the figures begin to move
and take on a life of their own. Couples begin to appear, filling the whole canvas to
an almost claustrophobic degree, barely touching one another yet combined by the
design of the composition into one mass, one extent. They are painted in white, pinks
and yellows, colours he has not used in subsequent work. There follow intense blues
and reds applied in thick layers. The figures begin to lose their distinct outlines,
as if melting and expanding to cover the whole area of the painting. They are
succeeded by figures dressed in hats, as immobile as the earlier officers, who wait,
like sitters posing to be photographed in a bourgeois photographer's studio, by a
little table with a vase of flowers, to be immortalized. The decorative motifs grow
rarer, a single chromatic tone begins to dominate each painting. The figures have
become solid, dense masses, only a few key features are etched into the thick layers
of paint: a pair of trousers, collar, sleeves. The subjects are rendered in profile
and tend to be associated with decorative motifs, which now grow more frequent: a
lighted cigarette, a tie or a fluttering scarf, windswept hair, a bicycle, a flock of
birds. The individual figures now detach themselves from the group and move more
freely in space. At the same time female figures appear, usually in supporting roles.
These are the subjects which recur over and over again in his work, although the
sequence is broken by the occasional interval. For a short time he painted men in
striped pajamas, surrounded by schematically rendered apartment blocks, in an
oppressive, stifling atmosphere. There was a phase when gold dominated his work, like
a reminiscence of the Byzantine ground. There are playful reminders of this phase in
later works, too. There was his short sensual period, when figures were depicted
sprawled in lascivious abandon, both sexes combined, but in poses more narcissistic
than charged with passion. Next to appear were the hermaphroditic young bodies, whose
faces, childlike and yet sensual, have remained a recurrent feature in his work. The
childlike directness of his work conceals below its ingenuous, popularist surface a
more profound and intimate tenderness. Inspired by figures from the shadow theatre
and by the work of Theophilos he creates familiar figures which for all their
ordinariness are endowed by his brush with the monumental stature of ancient
divinities. The scenes he chooses to depict are banal moments from everyday life: a
seated man, smoking; a man standing beside his bicycle or horse; a plate of fish, a
vase of flowers, etc. Yet the immobility of the figures and the sheer solidity of the
structure and expression give the moment a historic dimension, transforming the
personal and the monotonous into the general and eternal. Common reality is given new
shape as a dream-like, fantastic image. The bodies are rendered to emphasize their
weight, using single, intense colours. They are moulded into life step by step, from
the interior outwards, and finally given a covering of clothes. Although the
rendering is schematic, they do not become mere abstract symbols, nor are they
deprived of volume. Robust, sturdy male and female figures are rendered with curves
and compact, single volumes. The two-dimensional surface is enriched with a thick
layer of paint, the details incised into it. The severe, monochrome surfaces are
dominated by the austere line of the design. The decorative motifs, depending not on
variety but on repetition, are not employed for the sake of simplistic narration;
they are the breath of life in a rationally constructed world. The subjects depicted
are never without history; even where there is no explicit narrative content, the
artist's gift for creating myths allows him to employ subtle shades of colour to
weave a magical world before the very eyes of the spectator.