Valerios Caloutsis was born in Chania, Crete in 1927.

He studied at the School of Fine Arts, Athens between 1947 and 1953 under Yannis Moralis. He continued his studies first in London at the St Martin’s School of Art and later in Paris at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, where he settled down permanently.

In 1957 he presented his first solo exhibition at Galerie 93 in Paris. His initial work consisted of compositions with abstract figurative elements. These soon developed to canvases with textured surfaces full of emotional tension.

He moved on to works where he integrated technological and industrial elements such as engines, mirrors and photocells. His interest in the use of light led him to produce a series of luminous-kinetic works, ‘Kinoptics’, that made him widely known in the international art scene of the 1960s.

His concerns regarding human communication, nature’s regenerative power and the consequences of scientific developments on the planet produced two series of works: ‘Naturmatic’ and ‘Erosions’. In these series he developed a wide range of mixed-media works, using materials sometimes found in nature, advanced technologies or traditional techniques.

In 1990 he returned to Greece and settled down in his birthplace town of Chania but retained his close bonds with France.

Caloutsis presented his work in more than twenty solo shows in France, England and Greece and participated in many group exhibitions abroad, notably; the 1958 and 1959 Salon de la Jeune Peinture, Paris, the 1968 Avantgarde Griecheland exhibition in Berlin, the 1972 Salon des Realites Nouvelles, Paris. In 2005 the Chania Municipal Gallery staged a large-scale retrospective exhibition of his work.

His work can be found in the National Gallery of Greece, the National Gallery of Melbourne, the City of York Gallery, the Leicestershire County Collection, the Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio, the IBM Collection in Paris and many other public and private collections.