Biography

Sarantis Karavousis was a Greek painter and printmaker, a key figure of postwar Greek art in the diaspora. He studied painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts (1959–1963) with Yannis Moralis, while also exploring fresco (mural) technique and working in stage design. In 1965–1966, supported by a Greek State Scholarships Foundation (IKY) grant, he travelled to study ancient, Byzantine, and folk art in depth. He taught freehand drawing at the Center for Technological Applications in Athens (1966). By the late 1960s he had relocated permanently to Paris: on a French government scholarship he attended the École des Beaux-Arts (1967–1968) and continued his studies through 1974 at the École Pratique des Hautes Études and the École du Louvre. In his first Paris years he concentrated on printmaking, producing from 1969 onward a sustained body of woodcuts, etchings, lithographs, and screenprints—a way to circulate his work to a wider public.

His first solo painting exhibition took place in Athens in 1971 (Ora Art Gallery). He went on to present many solo shows in Greece and abroad and to participate in major group exhibitions, notably the São Paulo Bienal (1979), where he represented contemporary Greek painting internationally. In 1984 he received the Prix Drouant–Cartier in Paris from a jury of French art critics and writers, a distinction that underscored his standing on the international scene. Important retrospectives followed in Greece—Municipal Gallery of Rhodes (1984), Vafopouleio Cultural Center, Thessaloniki (1990), and Municipal Gallery of Patras (1994). Throughout, Karavousis kept close ties with the French and international art worlds, working with Paris galleries such as Galerie Blondel, Galerie Sculptures, and Art et Patrimoine, and regularly exhibiting to audiences of the Greek diaspora.

Karavousis’s painting belongs within a metaphysical current, drawing on Giorgio de Chirico, Giorgio Morandi, and Carlo Carrà, while engaging his Greek cultural heritage. His subjects include landscapes and monuments (classical temples, statues, funerary steles, masks), interiors, still lifes, and object compositions. With subtle tonal gradations, idiosyncratic light, and a frequent, deliberate unsettling of perspective, he creates atmospheres of mystery and poetic suggestion. Everyday objects become charged presences—far from “still,” they carry existential and emotional weight. A sense of absence and solitude often hovers: human figures are rare and, when present, understated, leaving space and things to speak of relationships, memory, and time. Alongside painting, he pursued printmaking, drawing, illustration, and scenography, extending his inquiry across media.

Works by Karavousis are held in major public and private collections in Greece and abroad. In Greece: the National Gallery – Alexandros Soutsos Museum, other museums and municipal galleries, the Averoff Gallery (Metsovo), the Kouvoutsakis Collection, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Andros (Basil & Elise Goulandris Foundation). Beyond Greece: the Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, and other European collections—evidence of the reach of his art. Living in France for more than four decades and fully integrated into its artistic life, he stood as a bridge between the Greek visual spirit and the international scene.

Selected Bibliography

1. Stelios Lydakis, Sarantis Karavousis — Painting. Athens: Melissa, 2006.
2. National Gallery – Alexandros Soutsos Museum (nationalgallery.gr): Biographical note on Sarantis Karavousis.
3. Municipal Gallery of Chania (pinakothiki-chania.gr): Artist page for Sarantis Karavousis.
4. Biblionet (Hellenic Foundation for Culture): “Karavousis, Sarantis” — short bio and works list.
5. Municipal Gallery of Chania, Beyond the Real. Chania, 2009 (exhibition catalogue).