The great painter, engraver and sculptor, Chronis Botsoglou, died at the age of 81.
His funeral will be political and the day has not been set yet.
Chronis Botsoglou was born in Thessaloniki in 1941. He studied at Sarafianos’s tuition center and studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts (1960-1965), at the laboratory of Giannis Moralis, with a scholarship from IKY.
He was still a student when he made his first solo exhibition in Athens (1964, Center for Technological Applications), with works that showed influences from Bouzianis. He continued his studies at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris (1969-1972, with a state scholarship).
During this period his painting became more realistic and was associated with his political campaign. In a similar spirit, he participated (together with G. Valavanidis, K. Digas, K. Katzourakis and G. Psychopedis) in the establishment and exhibitions of the group “Young Greek Realists” (1971-1973), which he presented (in Greece) works with critical content, during the dictatorship period.
Participation in collective activities had begun before the dictatorship, when he was a member of the “Art Group A” and collaborated with the Art Inspectorate. He also collaborated with the Free Theater (1973), the “Center for the Visual Arts” (1974-1976) and, later, became a member of the “Group for Communication and Art Education” and the “Engraving Center”.
The realistic period of his painting, in addition to its obvious ideological background, was also a period of research in the field of design and color composition of the human form in the visual space. He will focus on this area in the coming years. Towards the end of the 1970s, as his political activity waned, his artistic pursuits expanded. The rendering of the space in dynamic interdependence with the human presence highlights the experiential dimension of his painting and allows the emotional charge of the characters and the gradual dominance of the autobiographical elements. His work is presented in continuous thematic sections, with the main characteristics of the existential references, the exhaustive elaboration of the form and the physicality of the painting material. His painting often coexists with sculptures.
In 1989 he was elected professor at ASKT, where he served as rector (2001-2005) and taught until 2008.
He has made more than 50 solo and many dozens of group exhibitions in Greece and abroad. He participated in the Sao Paulo Biennale (1969) and the Engraving Biennale (Heidelberg, 1988). His retrospective exhibitions were presented at the Municipal Gallery of Rhodes (1986), at the Vafopouleio Cultural Center (Thessaloniki, 1991), at the Art Gallery of the Cyclades (Ermoupoli, 2008) and at the National Museum of Contemporary Art (Athens, 2010).
His important work “Personal Nekia”, an art essay on memory, was presented for the first time at the Benaki Museum (2002) and then at the Famagusta Gate (2003), at the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art (2003), at the Cyclades Gallery (retrospective , Ermoupoli, Syros, 2008), at the National Museum of Contemporary Art (2010), at the Hellenic Institute of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Studies in Venice (2011) and at 16 Fokionos Negri (2014). It belongs to the collection of Larry and Sotiris Feliou. Chronis Botsoglou illustrated poetry collections and collaborated with writers and theorists, regularly publishing his texts. He has published three books and an album of computer-generated works (2007). In 2009 a monograph was published on his work.
Follow Skai.gr on Google News
and be the first to know all the news
