Greece’s peak summer season is here and among the world-renowned Greek artists that have best captured summer moments in his paintings is Alekos Fassianos. In fact, "Fassianos’ mythology was shaped by the Greek summer" as poet and art historian, E. Vakalo, once stated. More specifically, the artist displays the minor but characteristic moments of Greek summer: bees, melons, peaches, fish, steamers and everything else that reminds Greece, and in particular the Aegean; it is the time that he decides to spend his holidays on Kea, also known as Tzia, an island just a stone’s throw away from Athens.
Fassianos himself has also acknowledged that the ethereal, charming and fleeting images of summer always run through his mind: “My art expresses my personal sense impression of the Greek land, where I lived and which I experienced deeply. And that’s why I believe that the art of this land will reverberate around the world, not because it’ s Greek but because the truth of this locality is unique and inimitable. And this is something of interest for the whole world.”
And the artist goes on to note - his words bringing to mind his bees buzzing in the summer sky - that “while you travel far and wide, you must, like the bee, pick what you need to produce your own honey.”
Alekos Fassianos was born in Athens in 1935. He studied violin at the Athens Conservatory and painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts under Yiannis Moralis. Shortly after his first solo show in Athens (A23 Gallery, 1960), he went to Paris on a French state scholarship and studied lithography at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He finally settled in the French capital, where he lived for 35 years, keeping, however, an equally close relationship with Greece.
