Semertzidis Valias

In 1923 he settled with his family in Greece and from 1928 to 1936 he studied at the School of Fine Arts under Konstantinos Parthenis.
In 1936 he became a member of the group Free Artists, having already begun to exhibit the previous year. He presented his work in solo, group and international exhibitions, among which were the International Exhibition of Cairo in 1947, the Alexandria Biennale of 1963, and the International Engraving Exhibition of Leipzig the same year. In 1977 there was a retrospective of his work at the National Gallery.

During the German occupation he painted a series of compositions whose themes were hunger and the struggles of the people of Athens, while in 1944 he went up to the Eurytania mountains painting scenes from the life and armed resistance of the guerrillas, which were later transferred to full-sized paintings. After the war he became involved with engraving, indeed even inventing his own technique for the oxidation of zinc and copper.

Cultivating a type of expressionistic socialist realism, he depicted in the main the lives of workers, farmers, fishermen and mountain people. On a more limited scale, he was also involved with portraiture and landscape, particularly that of Rhodes, where he lived for many years and where he decorated with wall paintings the conference hall of the Chamber, as well as houses and various foundations.