Polykleitos Rengos was born on the island of Naxos in 1903, and ten years later his family moved to Thessaloniki.

In 1920, he enrolled at the School of Fine Arts, Athens, where he studied painting under Georgios Jakobides, Spyros Vikatos, Dimitrios Geraniotis, Georgios Roilos and Nikolaos Lytras.

He visited Mount Athos for the first time in 1926, where the landscape, architecture and art would influence his later work.

In 1930, he married painter Georgia Mandopoulou and in the same year moved to Paris where they lived for the next five years. While in the French capital Rengos attended painting classes at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and Colarossi. Additionally, he studied wood engraving with Dimitrios Galanis.

In 1933, he returned to Mount Athos and a year later published in Paris a wood engravings book titled ‘Mont Athos, Gravures sur bois’, with a preface by C. Diehl. In 1935, he returned to Thessaloniki with his family.

His paintings explore a variety of subject matters, merging different styles and experiment with many techniques. As a result, he is considered to be the leading representative of the so-called ‘Thessaloniki School’.

Rengos exhibited his work in numerous group and solo exhibitions in Greece and abroad, such as the 1932 and 1952 Salon d’Automne in Paris, the 1957 Alexandria Biennale, in 1959 at the Commercial Museum, Philadelphia and at the Macculloch Hall Museum, Morristown, New Jersey, in 1964 at the ‘Paviljon Kalemegdan’, Belgrade and in 1974 at the ‘Concourse’, Boston.

His work is found in many public and private collections in Greece, Cyprus and internationally, notably: The National Gallery of Greece, the Athens Municipal Gallery, the Rhodes Municipal Gallery, the Leventis Gallery, the Teloglion Fine Arts Foundation, the National Bank of Greece Cultural Foundation and many other public and private collections.