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Yiannis Maltezos

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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

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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

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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

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  1. ^ a b c "Artists - Maltezos Yannis". Contemporary Greek Art Institute. Retrieved 3 June 2018.
  2. ^ a b c d e "Maltezos Yiannis". National Gallery of Greece. Retrieved 3 June 2018.