Carwan Gallery‘s outpost in Athens recently inaugurated the first retrospective of the late artist Alekos Fassianos (1935-2022) in collaboration with the Alekos Fassianos Estate, and features a selection of functional objects created throughout his life, which will then be reproduced in small, certified editions. Born in the Greek capital during the interwar period, Fassianos studied painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts, before moving to Paris in 1960 with a scholarship by the French Government to study lithography at the prestigious Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. During his years in the city he befriended eminent personalities of the French avant-garde, such as Louis Aragon and Jean-Marie Drot. Interestingly, Fassianos didn’t follow the European avant-garde of the 1960s, but focused instead on developing his own creative vocabulary—one imbued with Mediterranean light and the simplicity of Greek classical and folk art.
Eventually, he created a beguiling vocabulary of humane, uplifting iconography that is unmistakably his own and quintessentially Hellenic. Fassianos’s designs are marked by simplicity and have a poetic edge that reflect his wider philosophy about human life: the artist believed that we should never rest on our laurels and always seize the day to make the most of life. All his furniture is therefore designed for practicality rather than comfort and with the idea to keep its users actively engaged in body and spirit. The exhibition presents a selection of seating, tables, lighting, painted ceramics, and other functional objects as museum artefacts,which will be reproduced for the first time in 2023. Carwan Gallery will replicate new, small editions of most of Fassianos’s designs with, as said, the certification and collaboration of the Alekos Fassianos Estate.
Carwan Gallery
Odos Polidefkous 39 (Piraeus)
185 45 Athens
Telephone: +30 210 4114536
Wed-Sat 12pm-8pm
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