We all want a piece of the ‘Picasso of Greece’

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The Athenian suburb of Agios Pavlos is not Montmartre. Passing the metro station and the graffiti-strewn tenements, there’s no sign that this is the domain of one of Greece’s most famous artists. But behind a striking copper door on Neofitou Metaxa Street lies the former family home of Alekos Fassianos, the man once dubbed “the Picasso of Greece.”

Fassianos was famous in his home country for his paintings, sculptures and furniture throughout his life. And his works reached the permanent collections of the Benaki Museum, the Pompidou Center and the Maeght Foundation.

People love his bronze sculptures of birds or cyclists.

However, despite his status as a national treasure, Fassianos never achieved widespread global recognition. But since his death in 2022, at the age of 86, there has been a wave of renewed interest. Last year, Tomasso Calabro in Milan he held a solo exhibition of his paintings and works on paper, and appeared as part of Ithaca, an exhibition about Greek artists at the Herald St gallery in London. His childhood home and workshop on the island of Kea have been converted into a two-story museum. “Evidently my father has found a new audience; “We have had an unexpected history of visitors to the museum who are young lovers of new-age Fassians,” says Viktoria Fassianou, who is in charge of the Alekos Fassianos Estate.

As a result, collector interest has been increasing. Hotelier Yiannis Retsos, who together with his wife Ioanna Dretta owns a collection of paintings by Fassianos, has already noticed this upward trend. “Prices have increased significantly in recent years,” he says. In November 2022, The hidden photo (1975), an orgy of red shapes and figures in a living room, raised more than €170,000 at a Bonhams Paris auction, against an estimate of between €80,000 and €120,000. Says Titi Angelopoulou, curator of Greek art at Bonhams: “Fassianos is like Andy Warhol in Greece. Everyone knows him and his popularity is increasing elsewhere.”

The most popular pieces among collectors are the blue and red paintings she began painting in the late 1990s, which depict “Phasian” symbols, “like the wind blowing through people’s scarves and hair,” says Viktoria. . At the Bonhams Greek sale in Paris last year, the dreamer Lord the wind, a scene of a pink sunset showing a figure holding a windswept scarf over his head, sold for €63,900 (estimate €20,000-€30,000). The coastal scene The sea hunter It sold for €44,800 (estimate between €12,000 and €18,000).

But Herald SaintÉmilie Streiff director suggests looking for paintings from the late ’60s, characterized by broad-bodied figures against flat expanses of vibrant color. The 2D figures and shapes are dark, almost surreal, and there is a strong sense of experimentation in the way he used a single color. “I think these are the most stylistically beautiful,” Streiff says. Retsos agrees, gravitating toward work from the ’60s and ’70s. “People tend to invest in the most recognizable works, but I like the early phases, where I can observe their evolution.” Fassianos’s sketches from this period are more moderately priced, including the charming beach scene. Loneliness, sold at a Bonhams auction in April for €12,800. At the lower end of the market, a lithographic poster of his thinker with clock (1978) is on 1stDibs for €490.

You can recognize his hand in “everything he did, from large, detailed paintings to small toys carved from sheet metal,” Streiff says. Regarding her design work, Viktoria notes that “people love her bronze sculptures of birds, cyclists or her various figures, as well as her tables and chairs with their unique shapes and colors.” Most of her furniture designs were unique and all belong to Fassianos Estate, but you can buy limited edition reproductions. Carwan Gallery in Athens currently has a selection, including a magnificent wicker bench (€12,000; limited to 100 pieces), a sofa with two painted snake heads in the center (€18,000), a glass table with red wooden legs ( €15,000) and a selection of lamps decorated with bronze cutouts with Fassian motifs (between €2,500 and €3,000).

But it is not necessary to spend. As you browse the small antique shops in Athens’ bohemian neighborhoods, like Pangrati or Exarchia, you’ll find trinkets with his signature scattered everywhere: ashtrays painted with profiles of gods, or the books he designed for Olympic Airlines that were once given to passengers (although Viktoria is quick to mention that some of these are fake).

And some of its pieces cannot be collected, only enjoyed. The work of Fassianos that Retsos is most proud of is an installation he privately commissioned, cut from sheet metal and arranged on three walls around a staircase. “The clear metal shapes represent the heads and shoulders of a boy and a girl: my wife Ioanna and I, surrounded by flowers,” he says. “Doves symbolize the feeling of escape.”