Angel in white, 1994

With his multi-faceted talent, Alekos Fassianos has worked in painting, print-making, stage set design, jewellery production, book illustration, as well as in poetry, essays, photography, cinema, the Karaghiozis shadow theatre, and the applied arts. In parallel with his studies in painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts (1956 - 1960), he took music lessons. In order to continue his studies, he went to Paris in 1960, where he remained for long periods. In his sui generis painting, with its simple and clean-cut design, as well as its unusual colours, with power of expression and symbolic value, features can be observed which clearly bear the mark of tradition - ancient Greek, Byzantine, and vernacular - particularly from the figures of Karaghiozis and Theophilos. These subjects, whether they are human figures with androgynous features, full of strength and vigour, sometimes in strange postures - they are often smoking and very frequently are on bicycles - or still lifes in which the blessed produce of the earth and the sea of Greece - his beloved watermelon, tomatoes, carrots, fish - he negotiates in a way which is authentic and spontaneous. Simple everyday events, chance stances, spontaneous movements, commonplace situations in the work of this artist are transubstantiated into poetry, into dream, with the result that the enjoyment of the moment takes on duration through time. By means of the strong velvety colours and the spontaneous design, he is capable of elevating the familiar, the simple pleasure, into images which touch upon the sphere of the eternal and the unique. His painting is a depiction of everyday life, full of a calm treatment, but also anarchy, the expression of fervent desires and hopes, and a constant endeavour to attain them; it is the need of each moment and its redemption.