Biography

Aginos Asteriadis was a many-sided Greek artist—painter, printmaker, icon painter, and illustrator—and a leading figure of Greece’s “Generation of the ’30s.” He showed an early gift for art, studying first with Christos Papamerkouriou in his hometown and later with Erato Asprogeraka-Valvi in Athens. In 1915 he entered the Athens School of Fine Arts, where he studied painting with Georgios Roilos, Georgios Iakovidis, Spyridon Vikatos, Pavlos Mathiopoulos, and Nikolaos Lytras, graduating in 1921. That same year he held his first solo exhibition in Larisa, launching a long, energetic exhibiting career. In the interwar years he showed regularly and, in 1925, joined the Association of Greek Artists. He was a founding member of Techni (1930) and, after the war, of Stathmi (1950)—two forward-looking collectives that sought to articulate Greekness in modern art.

Alongside his practice, Asteriadis taught art in secondary education—appointed in 1925 to the Grevena Gymnasium—and later taught freehand drawing at various Athens schools (the Technical Company, the Zanneio Orphanage, and “Hellenikon Spiti”) until 1942. He traveled widely—especially in Thessaly and Macedonia—drawing inspiration from natural and architectural landscapes that he recorded with great sensitivity. He was a regular participant in group and Panhellenic exhibitions and represented Greece at major international events: the Venice Biennale (1934, 1940) and the São Paulo and Alexandria Biennials (1959). He also worked extensively in ecclesiastical art (copying Byzantine murals, painting church interiors, designing mosaics and panel icons) and illustrated books of every kind, from school readers to literature. As a printmaker, he issued artist’s albums—e.g., The House of Schwarz in Ambelakia (1928)—and co-created Children’s Drawings (1933) with Spyros Vassiliou, which received the Grand Prix for Publishing at the 1937 Paris Exposition; during the Occupation he produced single-sheet prints inspired by folk songs.

Asteriadis’s painting centers on Greek life and nature. He rendered rural and urban landscapes with lyricism, portrayed everyday figures, and also produced portraits, nudes, and still lifes. Landscape, in particular, became a constant focus and a distinct chapter in 20th-century Greek painting. His work is marked by an intense sense of Greekness, grounded both in subject matter (familiar places and people—often from Thessaly) and in his unforced, plain-spoken gaze. He forged a highly personal style that creatively fuses Byzantine iconography, folk art, and naïf painting with his own idiosyncratic perspective; at the same time, he absorbed aspects of European modernism, with allusive nods to Cubism and Surrealism. After 1960 he experimented with bolder constructions, introducing a more complex sense of space and depth.

His work was widely recognized in his lifetime: the Athens Technological Institute organized his first retrospective in 1961, followed by a major survey at the National Gallery in 1976. After his death, institutions such as the Municipality of Athens, the Municipal Art Gallery of Larisa, and the Benaki Museum honored him with exhibitions and publications. As a teacher, he passed on a love of drawing and of Greek artistic tradition to younger generations. Modest yet pioneering, he consistently sought to unite genuine folk tradition and the Byzantine spirit with modern formal languages. His works are held in many public and private collections, including the National Gallery – Alexandros Soutsos Museum, the Municipal Art Gallery of Larisa (G. I. Katsigras Collection), and the Benaki Museum.

Bibliography

1. Lexicon of Greek Artists: Painters – Sculptors – Printmakers, 16th–20th c., vol. 1 (A–I). Athens: Melissa, 1997, pp. 112–114.
2. Eirini Orati (ed.), Aginos Asteriadis 1898–1977. Athens: Cultural Organization of the Municipality of Athens, 1998.
3. Eirini Orati (ed.), G. I. Katsigras Collection — Municipal Art Gallery of Larisa. Larisa: Municipality of Larisa, 2005.
4. Anna Astrinaki (ed.), Aginos Asteriadis 1898–1977. Athens: Benaki Museum, 2011.
5. National Gallery – Alexandros Soutsos Museum (website), “Asteriadis, Aginos (1898–1977)” (accessed 2025).

This biography was created with the assistance of AI.