Yannis Maltezos was born in Smyrna in 1915.

He initially attended painting lessons and then continued his studies at The School of Fine Arts, Athens.

His paintings exhibited at the 1939 Pan-Hellenic Exhibition included landscape and still life in an expressionistic language with abstract tendencies. In the years to follow Maltezos’s work has a research character that by the mid-fifties leads to a full abstract language.

In 1959, Maltezos settles down in Paris.

His painting style belongs to the European tradition of abstraction characterised by expressive gestures, rich colour and texture that create surfaces full of emotional tension, always aware of the final aesthetic result. He is one of the most important abstract artists of his generation.

He participated in major exhibitions, both in Greece and overseas such as: the 1959 Sao Paolo Biennale, the Smithsonian Institute in Washington in 1961, the Ann Ross gallery, New York in 1961, the Oeil de Boeuf gallery, Paris in 1962 and 1963, Griekse Kunstenaars, Antwerp in 1964, the Ward Nasse Gallery, New York in 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, the Galerie Berthe, Paris in 1981.

His work can be found in The National Gallery of Greece, The Municipal Gallery of Athens, The National Bank of Greece and many other public and private collections.