A physician, a painter and an amateur archaeologist from Naples, Ceccoli sought in Corfu in 1839 the ideal climate for his ill daughter. From 1843 to 1852 he lived in Athens, working as a unpaid professor of painting at the School of Arts. In 1843, he played a major role in establishing the “Fine Arts Society.” In 1853, his works – drawings, genre paintings, paintings inspired from the Greek Revolution, as well as a portrait of King Otto – were exhibited in a room of the National Technical University. He finally left Greece after 1853.

He was mainly engaged in portraiture and landscape painting.

He studied at the School of Fine Arts under Yannis Moralis, graduating in 1965. From 1969 to 1974 he lived and worked in Lausanne, Paris and then New York, on a grant from the Ford Foundation. Since 1988 he has been teaching painting at the School of Fine Arts of the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki.

He has presented his work in solo and group exhibitions in Greece and abroad, among which are the Alexandria Biennale of 1977 and the Brussels Europalia in 1982.

Influenced by social problems, he has focused his interest on human beings, the central motif in all his painting, while the motorcyclist has become the main symbolic figure of his entire oeuvre. Gradually distancing himself from realistic depiction, he experimented for a while with the techniques of the avant garde, but in the end opted for a style based on expressionism.

Displaying an inclination for painting from a very early age, he came to Athens in 1921 where until 1926 he studied at the School of Fine Arts, first under Alexandros Kaloudis and then Nikolaos Lytras. In 1930 he won the Benakeio Prize for his drawings for the wall paintings of the Ayios Dionysios Areopagitis and with that money made his first extensive educational tour of Europe, completing the illustration of the church walls from 1936 to 1939.

He began to exhibit in 1926, holding his first solo exhibition in 1929 at the Stratigopoulos gallery. A founding member of the “Techni” (Art) Group and “Stathmi” (Level), he contributed to their exhibitions as well as to the Biennales of Venice, in 1934 and 1964, Alexandria in 1957 and Sao Paolo in 1959. In 1955 the icons he made for the church of St. Constantine in Detroit were presented a that city’s Art Institute and in 1960 his work Lights and Shadows was exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum and awarded the local prize of the Greek Division of AICA. In 1975 and in 1983 his work was presented in exhibitions at the National Gallery.

For many years he taught at private and theater schools. In 1927 he began his involvement with set design, making the sets for many plays in both private and state theaters, as well as for quite a number of films. During the German occupation, he turned to engraving and circulated woodcuts, illustrated manuscripts and editions in manuscript, all clandestinely. His artistic creation also included book illustration, along with the publication of texts and caricatures in newspapers and magazines while in 1933, in collaboration with Agenor Asteriadis, he published “Pedika shedia” (Children’s Drawings).

A leading force of the “Thirties Generation”, Spyros Vasileiou was imbued with the ideal of “Greekness”. Using oils, tempera and water colors he depicted natural and urban space, portraits, still lifes and scenes from everyday life, combining select elements of tradition with models taken from constructivism, surrealism, pop art and photo-realism and creating compositions which were lyrical and, frequently, dream-like.

She studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris (1958-1960). In 1969, she began exhibiting, including a great number of solo exhibitions, contributions to Paris Salons and a wealth of group events in Europe and the United States.

Sofia Vari began her career as an artist with painting and also embraced sculpture. Her earliest work was anthropocentric, stylised, with flowing, flexible volumes. The stylisation in these works subsequently gave its place to abstraction, echoing Henry Moore’s and Jean Arp’s style, her subjects inspired by Greek mythology.

She studied at the School of Fine Arts (1903-1907) under Konstantinos Volanakis, Georgios Roilos, Nikephoros Lytras and Georgios Jakovides and also took lessons from Spyridon Vikatos. During the decade of 1897-1907, while still a student, she took part in many important artistic exhibitions, at the Zappeion Hall, the Society of Art Devotees and the Parnassos Hall as well as the International Exhibition of Athens in 1903. In 1906 she presented a show of her works, along with Thaleia Flora, and in 1907 had a solo exhibition at Parnassos Hall. With a scholarship from the Bozeios Bequest she completed her studies in Munich where she took private lessons and enrolled in the School of Ladies of the Society of Women Artists. She later settled in Paris, studying at the Grande Chaumiere and Colarossi Academies and presenting works at official Salons and group exhibitions. After her return to Greece in 1916 she continued her artistic and exhibition activity with appearances in group exhibitions and the organization of solo shows (1917, 1919, 1924, 1927, 1952). She lived the last years of her life in seclusion.
Her subject matter included genre scenes, portraits, still lifes and landscapes, which she rendered by exploiting the doctrines of impressionism.

Not much is known about his life. He worked in Haarlem between 1605 and 1655, where he got married in 1612.

He painted market and kitchen scenes, and still lifes. Large-scale market scenes were introduced by Pieter Aerten and Gioakim Joachim Beuckelaer. In fact, the former’s sons, Pieter and Aert, and their followers promoted them in Amsterdam and Haarlem, where they became a very popular genre. The work of van Schooten is characterized by its lack of motion, while in most of the painters who worked on this subject there is an obvious effort to capture the movement of the figures in space. From 1620, however, he introduced a perspectival opening of the setting to other rooms or landscapes.

Apart from his depictions of market or kitchen settings, in which a religious scene was often incorporated, as part of the daily life in Holland, the artists also depicted the “morning” theme, without any figures in the painting. A number of simple still lifes of a few kitchen utensils was made before 1630. This kind of composition eventually became more sophisticated, encompassing tablecloths, elaborate metal ware, and dishes of cheese, ham, fruit.

Jean-Andre Rixens (Saint-Gaudens 1846 – Paris 1924) began his studies at the Toulouse School of Fine Arts and in 1846 went on to study in Paris, where he was a pupil of Gerome. The artist focused on portraiture, historical and mythological scenes, while in the late 19th century, and even more so in the 20th, he was influenced by impressionism and pursued landscape painting.