Sakellion Dimitris (1949)

Born in Volos in 1949, he studied painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts (1965-1970). In 1973 he went to Paris in a scholarship to study painting at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. After his studies he stayed on in France for four years, attending exhibitions and studying at museums. He presented his first solo exhibition in Athens (Syllogi Gallery, 1978).
In his early works the human figure is painted in an expressionistic mood with vivid colours. Characterised by subjectivity and emotion, his figures appear expanded to a large scale, taking up the entire canvas. After the late 1970s he starts increasingly to incorporate objects and materials in his paintings and is thus gradually led to three-dimensional works and installations. The artist’s artistic and conceptual quests also expand along the successive stages of this process.
Initially using familiar objects from his own surroundings (painting implements, music records, clothes, etc.), he goes on to establish a dialogue with natural materials (straw, tar, burnt wood, earth); soon he begins to add technological products (light bulbs, TV sets) in wall-mounted or freestanding compositions that allude to both nature and the urban environment. In his more recent work he presents installations in the dark combined with video, neon lights, sheet metal and other materials. The forms and shapes that make up his visual and thematic vocabulary act as parts of a suggestive narrative; he also adds words or texts on concepts like time or knowledge. His entire oeuvre constitutes a novel approach to the relations between physical and virtual reality, cultural memory and human emotion.
Between 1999 and 2014 he taught and ran the 5th Painting workshop of the Athens School of Fine Arts.
He has presented his works in solo exhibitions and taken part in numerous group shows in Greece and abroad (Madrid, Berlin, Strasbourg, Paris, Amsterdam, Rotterdam). He participated also in the Salon des Realites Nouvelles (1977) and the Salon de Mai (1978) in Paris. His works can be found in the National Gallery, the Vorres Museum and other public and private collections.