Christos Kapralos was born in 1909 in Panaitolio, a village close to the city of Agrinio.

In 1930 he enrolled at the School of Fine Arts, Athens where he joined the workshop of Oumbertos Argyros from which he graduated in 1934. On recommendation from sculptor Michael Tombros, he continued his studies in sculpture, in Paris between 1934 and 1940 at the academies of Grand Chaumiere and Colarossi, mostly in the workshop of the sculptor Marcel Gimond.  Both his Greek and Parisian studies were supported by scholarships from the Papastratos brothers, who were major benefactors in Agrinio.

On the outbreak of World War II, Kapralos returned to Greece to fight for his country. After the defeat of the Greek front, he returns to his home village where he stayed until 1946. During these years he produced some of his finest early works in plaster, using mainly his mother as a model but also close friends, relatives or other villagers.

In 1962 he represented Greece in the international Venice Biennale, an important landmark in his career, where his work received high praise from the international press and commissions followed worldwide.

From 1962 onwards, Kapralos moved on, developing a more contemporary language that enabled him to express his concerns fully. He distanced himself from the archaic and the folklore and imposed new values in his work. Without abandoning older subjects such as animals, he now turned his attention to the human form: Couple, Mother and Child, Warrior and Struggle are some of his subject matters. His sculpting of volumes and shapes, his deformations and gaps, the juxtapositions of angular and curved volumes gave his work a unique voice. He worked with the mediums of gypsum, wood, sandstone, stone, marble and bronze.

In 1991 he established the Christos and Souli Kapralos Foundation where he left a collection of approximately 7500 works to the Greek Nation, which in addition to sculptures included also sketches, paintings, terracotta and ceramic pieces. These are exhibited at the Christos Kapralos Museum, his workshop/home in Aegina, now an annexe of the National Gallery of Greece.

Kapralos held many international solo exhibitions such as at the Venice Biennale (1962); the Martha Jackson Gallery, New York and Park Gallery, Detroit (1963); the Cincinnati Art Museum (1967); the Albert White Gallery, Toronto (1969). He also participated in several prestigious group exhibitions such as the 'Greek Artists', Belgrade (1962); the Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York (1963); the Frankische Gallery am Marientor, Nuremberg (1964); the 'International Exhibition', Pittsburgh (1964 and 1967); the 'Concorso Internazionale del Brozetta', Padova (1965, 1967 and 1973); the 'Samuel Fleisher Art Memorial, Philadelphia (1965); the Sonsbeek' 66, Arnheim (1966); the Venice Biennale (1972) and the Sao Paolo Biennale (1975).

His work can be found in many public and private collections in Greece and internationally. Notably at the National Gallery Greece, the Municipal Gallery of Athens, the National Bank of Greece and the Christos Kapralos Museum in Aegina.