Georgios MAVROIDIS Greek, 1912-2003

Georgios Mavroidis was born in Piraeus in 1912. He spent his childhood in Larnaca, Cyprus, the birthplace of his father and maintained a close relationship with the island throughout his life. 

He studied law and political sciences at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. In 1946 he entered the Diplomatic Service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and was stationed firstly in Paris and then in Trieste.  

He painted without any formal painting education. He was a founding member of the art group ‘Armos’ through which he exhibited his work from 1948. 

In 1959 he was elected a professor at the School of Fine Arts, Athens, thus retired from the diplomatic corps. He served as a director from 1975 to 1977 and Dean from 1977 to 1978. 

Although his work appears to have certain common characteristics with the art of his generation, it differentiates itself through its use of bold colour and freedom of expression in form. His visually stimulating expressionist gestures highlight the work’s psychological dimension. However, his most characteristic personal idiom is the shaping of form expressed through vigorous, dynamic brushstrokes. This is executed in a way that often has a distorting effect but is without disintegrating the image structure. His subject matter includes landscape, still life and portraiture of many friends and personalities. 

Mavroidis held many solo shows in Greece, Cyprus and other European cities as well in New York. He also participated in many prestigious group exhibitions such as the Sao Paolo Biennale (1955 and 1957); the Alexandria Biennale (1962) and the Venice Biennale (1966). In 1986 the National Gallery of Greece staged his first large scale retrospective.  

His work can be found in many public and private collections, notably: The National Gallery of Greece, the Athens Municipal Gallery, the Leventis Gallery, the National Bank of Greece and the State Gallery of Contemporary Cypriot Art.

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