Spiropoulos Giannis

He studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts with Spyridon Vikatos, Umberto Argyros and Epamineondas Thomopoulos (1933 - 1938). In 1938, with a scholarship from the Academy of Athens, he went to Paris, where he continued his studies at the School of Fine Arts with Charles Guerin and in free academies. He returned to Greece in 1940 and later began to present his works in personal, group and international exhibitions in Greece and abroad (Alexandria Biennale 1955, Sao Paulo Biennale 1957, Kassel Documenta 1964, 1975). In 1960 he was honored with the U.N.E.S.C.O. Award at the 30th Biennale of Venice. In 1961 he was awarded the Gold Medal of the city of Ostend, Belgium, in 1966 the Brigadier General of the Phoenix in Athens and in 1978 the Gottfried von Herder Prize in Vienna. In November 1990, a few months after his death, the Giannis and Zois Spyropoulou Foundation was established, which aims to collect, study, present and utilize the paintings of G. Spyropoulos but also to support young painters.

A classic representative of Abstraction, Spyropoulos transitioned, consistently in the evolution of his morphological searches, from the pictorial performance to the abstract and, finally, to the purely abstract form. From the teachings of Cezanne and the stylized form he transitioned to the geometric structure and the building through color, to be lead gradually to the combined use of motley materials and the technique of oil painting, the juxtaposition of large dark with smaller light colored surfaces, to end up, in the last of his works on paper, to austerity and inwardness.