Dimitris Mytaras (June 1934 – 16 February 2017)

Dimitris Mytaras  was a Greek artist who is considered one of the important Greek painters of the 20th century.

His work was mainly inspired by the human figure, and a combination of naturalism and expressionism. From the 1960s onward, Mytaras moved in the direction of naturalism, while from 1975 an expressionistic approach became more and more marked in his output.

Dimitris Mytaras was born in 1934 in Chalkis. From 1953 till 1957, Mytaras studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts under Yiannis Moralis. Later on he studied stage design at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts Decoratifs in Paris. From 1964 till 1972, he directed the Interior Decoration Workshop of the Athens Technological Institute. Since 1975 he has been teaching at the Painting Workshop of the Athens School of Fine Arts. Mytaras has participated in more than 30 international group shows, including the 1972 Venice Biennale. Mytaras died on 16 February 2017 following major health complications, He was 83.

 

RIP Panayiotis Tetsis

Panayiotis Tetsis was a Greek painter. Tetsis was a genuine exponent of the post-impressionistic seascape tradition.

Born in 1925 on the island of Hydra, where he spent his childhood and early teenage years, Tetsis moved to Piraeus in 1937 .

Legacy

Though the artist depicts marine themes that are familiar to him – mostly set against the backdrop of Hydra and Sifnos. “If I take a long voyage at sea, I get bored,” Tetsis says, “and I don’t agree with Cavafy that headed for Ithaca we ought to hope that the voyage lasts as long as possible.” And he adds: “I paint a large number of my seas from memory. I don’t need to paint them from life. And even if I do, I change them later in my studio, even changing them totally.”

Balancing discipline and emotion, Tetsis regards himself as a painter driven by the senses. His singularity, according to Koutsomallis, consists in his combination of “elegiac colour tones, compositional clarity and precision, thematic variety, a monumental character and freely, openly sketched contours”.

In 1949 Tetsis along with Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas, Yannis Moralis, Nikos Nikolaou, Nikos Engonopoulos and Yiannis Tsarouchis, established the “Armos” art group.

Wikipedia