Remembering Fassianos, the "Vangelis of Greek painting"
The artist's myriad, mixed media works helped define the modern Athens cityscape
Alekos Fassianos, the renowned contemporary Greek painter, passed away today at the age of 86 at his home near central Athens. Athens, the city upon which he made his unmistakable artistic imprint. Athens, the city like many another still under a pandemic’s pall but also Athens, city of all-season orange blossoms and, though maybe you knew the images better than the name, the city of Fassianos. Take a break from the roar of Athenian traffic on that neat-o park bench in front of the Theocharakis Foundation—Fassianos designed it. Waltz into the big lobby of the Electra Hotel on Mitropoleos Street and there you will behold a colossal mixed-media mural in which bees figure prominently. Fassianos! Duck into the metro at Metaxourgeio and you’re in for a Fassianos treat there, too (pictured above). And more. One of his last artistic endeavors is also one of the least-known: Fassianos contributed the signature metal sculptural elements to an off-radar boutique hotel in the Pagrati section of Athens that I had the pleasure of naming, the Athens BlueBuilding. What follows are notes on the artist (and a rough cut video) I made in connection with the BlueBuilding’s debut in 2019. Simpler time for sure, but even in 2022, Athens is Fassianos country.
—Anthony Grant
FASSIANOS, PAINTER OF GREEKNESS
Among Greek contemporary artists in the postwar period, none has left a
bigger mark on the Greek capital than Alekos Fassianos. Born in Athens in 1935,
the “Fassianos look” is instantly recognizable thanks to its singular but ever-
evolving iconography blending references to Greek mythology and ancient
painting with evocative allusions to the history of modern Greece. He has been
variously inspired by gods and goddesses, by the traditional Greek “karagiozis”
folk puppets, ancient ruins and romantic café tables. With Fassianos the “myth of
Greekness,” however open to interpretation that may be, is something in which to
revel. The light-drenched Greek summer, a rider on a horse frolicking next to the
waves, a handsome sailor or a voluptuous couple in love: through his art he
awakens the full spectrum of the Greek spirit, often in vibrant splashes of blue or
red or even gold leaf. Bees and fish, peaches and dragons, all part of the
physicality and also unseen energy of a Greek island getaway and all making
appearances in the artist’s richly varied typologies. You may have spotted his
winged and buff bronze male figures eyeing each other underground in the
Metaxourgio metro station, or a coppery cutout of a more contemporary Athenian
man about town with flowing scarf and bicycle rising above the urban fray on
Aiolou Street. Classical ideals, modern accoutrements: Whenever you are in
central Athens today, you’re really in Fassianos country.
The artist has lived in Paris, as all great artists must at one point or another —
Fassianos was also honored by the French Government with the Grand Cross of
Knight of Arts and Letters— but Athens is the city Fassianos called home. Which
makes a sojourn of any length at Athens Blue not only a way to experience Athens
at its most unambiguously Athenian, in the heart of the Pagrati neighborhood
that’s always brimming with life, though more subdued right now, but also to
enjoy some of Fassianos’s unique artistic flourishes, such as the larger-than-life
metallic blue heads sizing each other up at the building’s entrance, or the stylized
dragons doing the same but above a viewing bench on the rooftop, with the
Acropolis in the distance. Writing in “For a Deregulated City” in 2004 Fassianos
said “there is great anarchy in our city. If there were some kind of discipline in
building then the whole town would make more sense,” adding that “it might be
nice for people to walk into a metro station and see interesting designs, or a
bench designed so that it makes you want to sit there—things to make the urban
environment more attractive.” At Athens Blue, the anarchy of the Athens
metropolis is held gently at bay and gets an aesthetic reboot too. In concert with
the creature comforts of the apartments, it is both a restful and revitalizing way to
stay. “Papaioannou [the architect behind Athens Blue] and I have a shared
sensitivity,” Fassianos said—“even knowing that we cannot save the world, we
can perhaps give people a brighter outlook on tomorrow.”
—Athens, 2019/updated 2022
Many of Fassianos’s successful commissions over the course of his long career were evidently for the city of Athens, because his works pop up where you least expect them—just the kind of thing that adds a bit of spice and artsy intrigue to the teeming metropolitan stew. Said a colleague, “Fassianos is for me like the Vangelis of modern Greek painting: iconic, vibrant and instantly recognizable—and like the great contemporary composer, secure enough in stature to be recognized by one name.”
Here’s that video I mentioned up above…Viva Fassianos.