Alekos FASSIANOS

Alekos Fassianos (1935-2022) – Biography, Original Lithographs and Illustrated Books

Alekos Fassianos (also spelt Alecos Fassianos) was born in Athens in 1935 and died there on 16 January 2022. Often described as one of the great figures of post-war Greek art, he trained as a painter in Athens and as a lithographer in Paris, and spent his working life between the two cities. His world is instantly recognisable: cyclists, smokers, poets and sleepers with classical profiles, birds, cherubs and wind-blown hair, drawn with a clean contour and laid down in flat areas of colour, ochre against Aegean blue. Alongside painting he was a prolific printmaker, an illustrator of fine press books, a stage designer and a poet in his own right.

Le Coin des Arts currently offers three works by Fassianos, each chosen for the quality of its printing or drawing, its edition, provenance and condition: Parodos (Fata Morgana, 1986), poems by Yannis Ritsos with five signed colour lithographs, our copy enriched with a large dedicated original drawing; Souvenirs enfuis (Fata Morgana, 1990), an edition of just 15 copies illustrated with twelve original coloured-pencil drawings; and a unique drawing, Untitled, a female nude in graphite heightened with orange and green pencil, dedicated, like the Parodos drawing, to Jacqueline and Bernard.

A violinist turned painter: Athens, 1935-1960

Fassianos grew up in the Athens district of Metaxourgeio, where the museum bearing his name now stands on the site of the family home. Music came first: he studied the violin at the Athens Conservatoire. From 1956 to 1960 he attended the Athens School of Fine Arts, where his teacher was Yannis Moralis, a leading member of the 'Generation of the Thirties' that sought a distinctly modern Greek art. From the start, Fassianos looked to older sources as much as to modernism: ancient Greek vase painting, Byzantine icons, folk imagery and the self-taught painter Theophilos. His first solo exhibition was held in 1960 at the A23 Gallery in Athens.

Paris, the lithographic stone and the years of exile

A French government scholarship took him to Paris in 1960 to study lithography at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, until 1963. Working on stone taught him to think in separate colours and firm outlines, and Paris brought him into contact with painters and writers, among them Louis Aragon, who wrote on his work. After a spell back in Athens he settled in Paris in 1967, the year the Colonels' junta seized power in Greece. The dealer Paul Facchetti showed him in Paris and later in Zurich; Munich, Hamburg and Tokyo followed. He was part of the Greek presentations at the São Paulo Biennial in 1971 and the Venice Biennale in 1972. Through the 1970s the Greek-born dealer Alexander Iolas exhibited him in his galleries in Paris, Geneva, Milan, New York and Athens, and from the mid-1970s Fassianos divided his time between Paris and Athens.

Fassianos in Britain: from Bond Street to Herald St

London has followed Fassianos for decades. Between the late 1970s and the 1980s he showed at Gimpel; in 2003 his work was presented by the Hellenic Foundation for Culture in London, and in 2011 by Opera Gallery. From 6 to 21 December 2012 the Grosvenor Gallery staged Fassianos: Everyday Myths – Le Quotidien Mythique, his first solo show there, presenting him as one of the masters of post-war Greek art. His paintings also appear regularly in Bonhams' Greek Sales, held at New Bond Street as well as in Paris. In 2026, four years after his death, the London gallery Herald St devoted an exhibition to him, The Dreamers.

Stage, shadows and public commissions

Fassianos designed sets for the National Theatre of Greece in 1975, 1976 and 1978, and sets and costumes for a production of Euripides' Helen in Athens. In 1983 he presented a small shadow theatre at the Revue parlée of the Centre Pompidou. In France the Musée Paul Valéry in Sète and, in 1985, the Château de Chenonceau gave him retrospectives; that same year he was made a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, and in 2013 an Officer of the Légion d'honneur. With the architect Kyriakos Krokos he remodelled a building in Metaxourgeio (1990-1995), designing mosaics, handles and façade details himself; in 2000 he painted two large murals, The Myth of my Neighbourhood, for the Metaxourgeio metro station. The National Gallery in Athens held a major retrospective in 2004. Ill health stopped him painting in 2019. The Alekos Fassianos Museum opened to the public on 26 April 2023, and the National Gallery's Corfu annex presents Under the Summer Sun from 26 June 2026 to 11 January 2027. His work is held by the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris, the Fondation Maeght, the Benaki Museum and the Museum of Cycladic Art.

The prints and fine press books

Lithography was Fassianos's native graphic language. Many of his lithographs were printed in Paris by Michel Cassé, who also pulled his exhibition posters and the plates for his books. Publishers included Alexander Iolas (a linocut, Portrait of a Man, 1971), the Paris bookshop-gallery La Hune, Éditions Futura and, above all, Fata Morgana, the fine press run by Bruno Roy. Parodos (1986), poems by Yannis Ritsos translated by Roy, was issued in 100 copies on Arches laid paper with a lithographed cover and five signed colour lithographs printed by Cassé; it was shown in 2015 at the Musée Paul Valéry in the exhibition Fata Morgana, un goût du livre. He also illustrated Odysseas Elytis and the poet Dimitri T. Analis, and worked occasionally in etching and drypoint, linocut, screenprint and stencil, sometimes heightened with gold leaf or gouache. Crucially, no catalogue raisonné of his prints has been published: an impression is identified by title, date, technique, publisher, printer and edition. The standard monograph is Pierre Cabanne and Dimitri T. Analis, Fassianos (La Différence, 2003).

Collecting Fassianos prints: a buyer's guide

Edition. Editioned lithographs are numbered in pencil; Fata Morgana books carry a justification in the colophon (100 copies for Parodos, 15 for Souvenirs enfuis). See our notes on the printing.

Signature. Paintings are often signed in Greek characters; prints are usually signed in pencil. Some lithographs carry a signature printed in the stone, which is no substitute for a hand signature.

Documentation. With no catalogue numbers to rely on, ask for the publisher and printer (Cassé, Iolas, La Hune blindstamp) and a full description of the sheet.

Illustrated books. A complete copy, with wrappers and every plate, is worth far more than loose leaves; a dedication or original drawing makes it unique. Browse our illustrated books.

Provenance. An inscription links a sheet to its first owner: our copy of Parodos and the Untitled drawing are both inscribed to Jacqueline and Bernard, giving the pair a coherent provenance.

Posters. Exhibition posters (Chenonceau, La Hune, Galerie Beaubourg) may be lithographed but are unsigned and printed in quantity; offset posters are reproductions, not original prints.

Condition. Large flat colours show fading, foxing and handling marks; choose UV-filtering glazing when framing. Our guarantees are set out on our authenticity page.

The gallery also selects prints by artists who, like Fassianos, built a language of line and Mediterranean myth: Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau, Henri Matisse, Jean-Michel Folon and Valerio Adami. Explore also contemporary art and our engravings and lithographs.

Sources and further reading

Pierre Cabanne and Dimitri T. Analis, Fassianos, Paris, La Différence, 2003 · Yannis Ritsos and Alecos Fassianos, Parodos, Fata Morgana, 1986 · Grosvenor Gallery – Everyday Myths, 2012 · Feliõs Collection – Alekos Fassianos · National Gallery, Athens – Alekos Fassianos · Bonhams, London – Greek Sale, 2013 · VOA / AFP – obituary, 2022