Yiannis Maltezos
show This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in Greek. (June 2018) Click [show] for important translation instructions. |
Yiannis (or possibly Yannis) Maltezos (Γιάννης Μαλτέζος) (Smyrna, 1915 - Paris, 1987) was a Greek painter and visual artist who spent much of his working life in Paris.
Personal life[]
Yiannis Maltezos was born in 1915 in the Boutzas district of Smyrna, today's İzmir, Turkey, where his father ran a timber business also selling paints and other materials for domestic and artistic use. With those materials readily available to him, Yiannis started painting around the age of six.[citation needed]
Following the events of World War I and its aftermath when the majority of the Greek population of Smyrna left the city, the family first settled in Heraklion for six years, later moving to Athens.[citation needed]
In March 1959 he married the Greek-American Helen Kosmas (1924-2016), and they moved the same year to Paris.
Maltezos died in Paris in 1987, but is buried in Athens.[1]
Artistic career[]
Maltezos studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts[2] where he attended classes while at the same time working in a private workshop.
He also worked as a set designer for the National Theatre of Greece before World War II.[citation needed]
After the war, he began experimenting with an abstract expressionist style, applying a 'drip technique'.[clarification needed]
Maltezos first exhibited at the Greek National Exhibition of 1939,[2] and his first solo exhibition was held in La Galerie Mouffe in Paris in 1962.[1] He also took part among other things in the 1959 edition of the São Paulo Art Biennial.[2]
Maltezos is considered one of the first artists to introduce abstract art to Greece.[2] He later moved artistically towards gestural and abstract expressionism and op art.[1][2]
References[]
- ^ Jump up to: a b c "Artists - Maltezos Yannis". Contemporary Greek Art Institute. Retrieved 3 June 2018.
- ^ Jump up to: a b c d e "Maltezos Yiannis". National Gallery of Greece. Retrieved 3 June 2018.
- 1915 births
- 1987 deaths
- People from İzmir
- Smyrniote Greeks
- Greeks of the Ottoman Empire
- 20th-century Greek painters
- Abstract artists
- Abstract expressionist artists
- 20th-century Greek sculptors