Aristotelis Vassilikiotis Greek, 1902-1972
Aristotelis Vassilikiotis was born in Eupatoria, Crimea in 1902 and died in Athens in 1972.
Between 1923 and 1928, he studied painting at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, in the workshop of Lucien Simon and parallel specialized in fresco. He remained in the French capital until 1932.
Between 1933 and 1935 he lived and worked in Abyssinia (current-day Ethiopia). He then returned to Athens where he established his studio.
Vassilikiotis was predominantly a landscape painter combining his idiom with elements from the work of Paul Cezanne. A painter of colour, he conveyed to the viewer the atmospheric dimension of the natural environment, rendering his volumes with a kind of cool colour, resulting in works that are characteristic of their sincerity and immediacy.
Undoubtedly, a large part of his work is a valuable artistic and historical legacy of Mykonos at the peak of its beauty (1947-1970). His themes include not only the natural beauty of its landscape and architecture but also scenes of the daily life of its people: festivals and other social gatherings, harvesting and other agricultural work, locals on the old pier ready to leave with their livelihoods, fishermen outside the Monastery of Panagia Tourliani, taverns and cafes, general views of the Chora and its neighbourhoods.
He exhibited his work in several solo shows in Greece, France, Ethiopia and Egypt and participated in group exhibitions abroad such as at the Salon d’Automne, Paris (1925); the Salon des Tuileries, Paris (1926, 1927, 1928); the Societe des Artistes Independants, Paris (1927) and the Alexandria Biennale (1955).
His work is in many public and private collections, notably: The National Gallery of Greece, the Athens Municipal Gallery, the Rhodes Municipal Gallery and the National Bank of Greece Cultural Foundation collection.
