About Me

In A Few Words

Hi, I'm George Georgiou.
Painting isn't just what I do, it's how I see the world. From a young age, I've been captivated by the way light dances across objects, the emotions hidden in a fleeting expression, and the stories whispered by textures and colors. For me, capturing these on canvas became a way to connect with the world around me, a language that transcended words.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

He studied painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts, with a scholarship from the State Scholarships Foundation from 1989-1995.
He studied painting at the 1st Painting Workshop with professor Dimitrios Mytaras.
Sculpture in the 1st workshop of sculpture with professor Efthimios Panourgias.
He attended the 1st workshop with professor Giorgos Zizkas where, together with his teacher, he contributed and constructed the stage-model for the play “Bus Stop” by T. Williams in July 1995. Since 1995, he has maintained his own creative workshop in Agios Dometios where he teaches painting to students and adults. He is married and has one child.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

1997 HILTON HOTEL, Nicosia
2000 Opus 39 Gallery, Nicosia
2001 Opus 39 Gallery, Nicosia
2005 Gallery K, Nicosia
2009 Gallery Cypriot Corner Larnaca
2010 Dramena Art Gallery Nicosia
2012 House of Cyprus in Athens
2015 Opus 39 Gallery, Nicosia

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

1991 Titanium Gallery, Athens
1992 Kreonidis Gallery, Athens
1992 Ion Salon of Young Artists (AENAON/ATHENS)
1993 Pancyprian Exhibition (Famagusta Gate / Nicosia)
1995 Greek Landscape (AENAON/ATHENS)
1997 Thekla Gallery, Larnaca
2006 Gallery K, Nicosia
2008 Gallery K, London

Public and private collections, National Gallery of Athens, Collection of the Ministry of Education and Culture of Cyprus, Collection of the Museum of the Holy Monastery of Kykkos, Private collection of M. Zambelas, Vorres Museum

SPEECH FOR THE INAUGURATION OF THE EXHIBITION By Lefteris Economou

Dear friends of Art,
It is with great joy, even if I never sought for it, that I accepted to open the second solo exhibition of my dear George Georghiou.
Usually, all of us who served in the field of Education for many years, we are used to saying that our efforts were all scattered or lost, perhaps! However, if we are more objective and pay attention to the young painters like my dearest George Georghiou and others older in age, then things seem to be different! These young talented people, may have become creators just because they were inspired by the great teachers of Art!

For an artist to be complete, three things are mostly needed! Firstly, he/she must discover his/her own special talent; secondly, his/her surroundings and the State must be convinced to allow him/her to follow a special education in Arts; and thirdly, after he/she successfully completes his/her studies and going through the painful and difficult course of studies in the School of Fine Arts, to be able to find his/her own character. Only after he/she puts him/herself together, rejecting gradually all the influences and through hard work, he/she creates works of his/her own that seal his/her own personality; then and only then he/she can become a creator artist.

George Georghiou, like other few Cypriot painters and sculptors such as Adamantios Diamantes, Telemachos Kanthos, Stelios Votsis, George Kotsinos, Nicos Dimitriotes, Andreas Ladomatos and others, whom I don’t refer to, have been very lucky because all of them had rare illuminated parents who allowed their children and helped them to study Arts! Artistic studies and artistic voyages are the two passports to the kingdom of the magic of the Great Art; all the rest are just superficialities, amateurisms and cheap excuses leading to nowhere. When I initially saw his first solo exhibition in Hilton, two years ago, I predicted that George Georghiou will be one of the last artistic hopes of our country! Today I can verify this completely.

George, the restless child of Kykkos B’ Lyceum, with the sensitive soul, was back then imitating the works of Salvador Dali! Always enthusiastic and spirited. Practically, he still remains the same. Except that now he banished all exterior influences, threw away everything borrowed and has found his inner own self. If you ask me what is expressed through these paintings, I simply reply to you they express agony and disappointment! Feelings we experience so often and so intensely in our times. They represent a yell of despair, a painted despair depicted and given through dull, joyless colors. Possibly reminding us of the tragic forms of our great fellow-country expressionist Bouliaslis or of the writer Francis Bacon.

I am quite certain that he is going through a pessimistic phase in his work that will be probably succeeded by another one more optimistic and hopeful.
George Georghiou is a perfectly skilled artisan; besides, this is proved by his exceptional black and white sketches, that collectors and friends of art should possess them. Their price is very reasonable. If we acted the same way in the past, during the times of great artists, now all of us collectors and friends of art we would have been very happy and much richer!

With these qualifications that he owns and with the great respect that he has towards our great fellow artists as well as towards great foreign artists, I have no doubts that some day he will be worthily and, on his merits, standing beside them.

THE “BLACK SERIES” OF THE PORTRAIT
GEORGE GEORGHIOU AT THE OPUS 39 GALLERY
By Anna Polydorou

He creates dozens of different unities through the same figure, that are composed under a strong humanistic scepticism. Artist, Georghiou, aims to activate the aesthetic facing of a busy spectator. The spectator who is everyday bombarded with easily consumed and spectacular pictures. To put a question mark to the today’s communicating structure of people, who, «while speaking the same language, they seldom understand each other», as Mr Georghiou mentions.

The main artistic proposal of his paintings, is the artistic agony for a world which gradually transforms into an endless negative situation. «Nowadays, there is more superficiality and less substance. Relationships break down very easily and people are not communicating anymore. Now everyone has their own fortress and are moving in their own personal space, unable to express what they want or feel.» This is where the artist focuses his thematic.

Portraits are a form of expression of an artist feelings. A subterranean and extremely personal flow of thoughts, concerns and challenges which is placed in a readable and identifiable shape in an abstractive sense. So that his conversation with the viewer is approachable, without ever being limited. Through this sense, faces have their own special character. The choice of color and the way he puts them on canvas, are his allies. With movements which are sometimes violent and intense, at other times playful and mocking, and at other times reserved and still. Because the artist expresses himself in a given moment, with particular emotions, while sometimes having a specific face (character) in his mind. «A subject is not easily exhausted. Which is why it is presented in many ways. The same figure might be repeated but then again this is something you cannot say with certainty. Some characteristics are stronger in some paintings, elsewhere the background changes, and as a result even though the theme remains the same, the viewer might see completely different things in each painting.»

The color for the artist is a flexible code of communication with the public since the composition of colors might not refer to particular messages, but surely causes particular emotions, which meet the creator’s psyche. A psyche that starts from the human being to end up to the person who more and more detaches, refusing to discover even his own self. The artist’s agony finds shape in faces, with extensions that can sometimes look like a cigarette, sometimes like smoke and sometimes like a dragon’s tongue. «The reason that this thing exists, is because many times what we say can be friendly, or ambiguous, or sometimes mean. Therefore what comes out from our mouth, is different every time and that differentially comes out in every piece in another shape. The point at which the person says mean or senseless things is defined by the viewer.»

The artist’s personal thoughts come out on the black, as he says, series that will be presented from Monday, 31 January at «Opus 39» Gallery in Nicosia. The exhibition will be open until 12th of February.

but also to convey the rich emotional content to the viewer as a means of communication for perception and understanding of a work that gathers inspiration, clarity, completeness and aesthetic value.

In the case of the portraits of the leaders of the two countries, Cyprus and India, the figures are accompanied by landscapes or symbols to underline the effort made for the world to be united, to live peacefully and to focus its interest on culture, human values ​​and the harmony of nature.

Another category of works that moves towards a genuine and spontaneous expression are the portraits of the simple people of our country with characteristic costumes, ways of behavior and expression. It is a mental contemplation of the artist's emotions that leads him to deeper nostalgic moments with the desire to transfuse them to people who have a different culture but share the same human anguish and feel the same psychic vibrations.

The female form covers a very large part of the artist's work. Whether as a fertile womb, or as a goddess or symbol of love, she gives a wonderful poetic dimension, fertilizes the will for a new universe and activates the imagination, redeems the spirit and excels in a metaphysical representation of a brighter region of the mind and soul.

George Georgiou, with his work, unfolds the nuances of life and the universality of art with imagination, colors of inspiration, sensitivity and presents his own proposal as a genuine poetic impression that manages to transform the material into essential value, the surface into deep contemplation and the debt into a mental contemplation of the things that exist around and within us.

ANDREAS HATZITHOMAS
Art Critic

THE ECUMENICALITY OF GREEK VALUES

In a time of global crisis, without precedent, the values ​​of humanity, dignity and freedom are not only questioned and violated daily, in all the latitudes and longitudes of the globe, but are also trampled upon in the most barbaric and sometimes horrific way. Hellenism in its timeless course has survived as a civilization, that is, as a quality of human existence through the millennia, remaining standing until our days because it gave birth to, cultivated, developed and defended man as a spiritual being; that is, as a civilization, as freedom, as dignity, as diversity and as a force of inspiration for the defense of the past and the conquest of the future. These values, when projected through art and especially through painting, acquire an image of approach by everyone visible in a dialectical dimension of the relationship of man with his spirituality, his conquests and his creations.

Art constitutes the most important and most understandable contribution to the fight against modern barbarism. In its effort to continue to exist as the rise of man, civilization is destined to follow the fate of the upper Throsko. Therefore, we must congratulate the Cypriot painter Georgios Georgiou, for the wonderful work he is doing in this work, hoping that he will find imitators at corresponding levels of cultural action that project Greek creation.

The President of the Hellenic Foundation for Culture
Professor Christodoulos K. Giallouridis

THE UNIVERSALITY OF GREEK PRINCIPLES

In today’s world, we experience an era of an unprecedented world crisis; the principles of freedom and human dignity are being disputed and violated across the world in the most cruel and violent way. Hellenism has through the centuries survived as a civilization, as a quality of human existence throughout millennia until the present day because it gave birth, cultivated, developed and defended the man as a spiritual being, namely as a civilization, as freedom, dignity, diversity and as a leading force for the defense of the past and conquest of the future.

These principles, when expressed through artistic creation and especially through painting, gain an approachable image, visible by everyone within a dialectic dimension of the relationship between man and his spirituality, his conquests as well as his creations. Art constitutes the most important and the most comprehensible contribution in the fight against contemporary barbarism. The efforts of civilization continue so that it exists as the rise of man, devoted to follow a spiritual destiny. We must, therefore, congratulate the Cypriot painter, Georghios Georghiou, for his admirable work and wish that others will follow his example at equivalent levels of cultural creation that project the Greek culture.

Professor Christodoulos Yallourides
President of the Hellenic Foundation of Culture

INDIA–CYPRUS: COMMON ROOTS ACROSS TIME
A Small Analysis on the Work of George Georgiou
By Prof. Panos Razis, Scientific Delegate of Cyprus at CERN

To my opinion, George Georgiou is one of the greatest painters of Cyprus and the Eastern Mediterranean region. One of the goals of his Exhibition entitled “INDIA–CYPRUS: Common Roots Across Time”, is to bring closer the common roots and aspects of civilization that emerged across time for two of the most ancient cultures in the world, the Indian culture and the Hellenic culture, the latter represented through its Cyprus manifestation. Through this Exhibition, nicely organized under the auspices of the High Commission of Cyprus to India, the remarkable talent and work of George Georgiou will become known to the wide population of the fine arts admirers among the Indian people.

George Georgiou is a highly inspired and gifted Cypriot painter with the rare talent to be able to uniquely project on his canvas one of the greatest miracles that exist, life in nature with all its mysteries and living beings, the beauty cherished across time from the ancient to the modern times, the heavenly bodies close to us or at the very remote parts of the Universe. Mythology, metaphysics and the great philosophical questions of life play a very important role in George’s paintings.

George beautifully mixes nature’s vital elements: water, light, the sky, all kind of matters up to the ethereal elements discovered on the expressions of people found in his paintings. Even beyond that, he very often uses heavenly bodies and the wildest elements that could possibly exist in metaphysical scenarios of the Cosmos with many different Worlds.

Indeed, in George’s vivid and full of intensity paintings, strange Worlds emerge from the bottom of the seas, exotic stars, planets and galaxies operating under different laws than we know in our Universe. They follow our unlimited imagination all the way to metaphysics. Who knows what the future brings, it might lead to exotic manifestations of ordinary phenomena.

I am witness of many lively discussions between George, myself and others on the strange discoveries that science brings, constantly surprising us. I try to explain to George what we do, what we discover and how we interpret strange phenomena revealing to us the very deep secrets of the Universe. I like to watch his reactions, great curiosity and agonies how to best project all his inspirations on the canvas. I observed George’s reactions on our discovery of the Higgs boson (known as God’s Particle) at CERN. They were simply spectacular, followed by intense discussions on the nature of things, God, man and the principles of life.

Despite George’s search for the absolute truth through exotic scenarios and strange visions, George cannot be considered to be a painter of the surrealistic school. He has his own style; one can easily see that he is deeply influenced by the universal principles and values that control our existence; values that survived for many hundreds of years in the Indian and in the Hellenic civilization, inherited from mother Earth and our ancestors.

One can also feel George’s persistent drive to escape from the modern crisis of our society, returning back to the values and principles we once had. He deeply believes to the goodness of human race but, unfortunately, in the decadence of our times this is more easily said than done. Nevertheless, our hope and efforts in this direction must continue for the sake of the next generations to come and the survival of our species. The roots across time are common for India and Cyprus.

Prof. Panos Razis
Scientific Delegate of Cyprus at CERN

AN AESTHETIC CONFIRMATION OF TWO WORLDS

The long journey of the painter, George Georgiou, to India aims at bridging the cultural encounter of his aesthetics with a country, rich in artistic tradition.

The invitation addressed to the artist to present his work in the capital of India is both an honorary and a remarkable distinction, as well as a challenge for the artist himself.

The works by G. Georgiou that are presented in New Delhi express a purity of emotions, infused with a transparent sincerity in their expression and illustration.

The artist is gifted with a rich insight and an exceptional sensation of form, color and composition. Being able to delve deeply into such parameters, he gives his own interpretation and personal tone in his works. He uses broad forms, a solid design, bright and vivid colors as well as a harmony of surfaces in order to give his works a transitional movement and a creative, vibrating connection of shapes and forms that highlight his technical ability and artistic sensitivity.

His exhibition has different thematic units which consist of diverse topics.

A greater emphasis is given to the portraits of leading personalities of both Cyprus and India, to their religious leaders as well as to deities and sacred symbols which take the dimensions of modern artistic creation.

The artist attempts, through his works, to connect faces and situations of the two countries so that art may surpass localism and spread in wider geographical areas.

The paintings of Georgiou are intensely graphic and full of sensitivity. They arouse interest and awaken emotions as they aim not only at the mere expression of their themes but also at the essential quest for the true, crucial and modern, existential questions as well as the restoration of balance in human relations.

Even in his imaginary, symbolic, mythical or historical portraits, in idols and figurines, the artist interweaves ideas, notions, parables and allegories.

Hence, we perceive components which are part of the artist’s work, whose dimensions prove that the artist is not only confined to the expression of a figure or a subject, but he also establishes his art on solid foundations that allow him to expose the core of his work more and to transfer his rich emotional awakenings to his audience as a means of perceiving and understanding a work full of inspiration, clarity, fulfillment and aesthetic values.

A SMALL ANALYSIS ON THE WORK OF GEORGHIOS GEORGHIOU

To my opinion, George Georgiou is one of the greatest painters of Cyprus and the Eastern Mediterranean region. One of the goals of his Exhibition entitled “INDIA–CYPRUS: Common Roots Across Time” is to bring closer the common roots and aspects of civilization that emerged across time for two of the most ancient cultures in the world, the Indian culture and the Hellenic culture, the latter represented through its Cyprus manifestation. Through this Exhibition, nicely organized under the auspices of the High Commission of Cyprus to India, the remarkable talent and work of George Georgiou will become known to the wide population of the fine arts admirers among the Indian people.

George Georgiou is a highly inspired and gifted Cypriot painter with the rare talent to be able to uniquely project on his canvas one of the greatest miracles that exists: life in nature with all its mysteries and living beings, the beauty cherished across time from the ancient to the modern times, the heavenly bodies close to us or at the very remote parts of the Universe. Mythology, metaphysics and the great philosophical questions of life play a very important role in George’s paintings.

George beautifully mixes nature’s vital elements—water, light, the sky, all kinds of matter—with ethereal symbols and the expressions of people found in his paintings. He often incorporates heavenly bodies and the wildest elements that could exist in metaphysical scenarios of the Cosmos with many different worlds.

Indeed, in George’s vivid and intensely expressive paintings, strange worlds emerge from the depths of the seas, exotic stars, planets and galaxies operating under different laws than those in our Universe. They follow our unlimited imagination all the way to metaphysics. Who knows what the future brings; it might lead to exotic manifestations of ordinary phenomena.

I am witness to many lively discussions between George, myself and others on the strange discoveries that science brings, constantly surprising us. I try to explain to George what we do, what we discover and how we interpret strange phenomena revealing to us the deep secrets of the Universe. I like to watch his reactions—his curiosity and agonies—about how best to project all his inspirations on canvas. I observed George’s reaction to our discovery of the Higgs boson (known as the “God Particle”) at CERN. They were simply spectacular, followed by intense discussions on the nature of things, God, man and the principles of life.

Despite George’s search for absolute truth through exotic scenarios and visions, he cannot be considered a surrealist. He has his own style; one can easily see that he is deeply influenced by universal principles and values that control our existence—values that have survived for many centuries in both Indian and Hellenic civilizations, inherited from Mother Earth and our ancestors.

One can also feel George’s persistent drive to escape from the modern crisis of our society, returning to the values and principles we once held. He deeply believes in the goodness of the human race but, unfortunately, in the decadence of our times, this is more easily said than done. Nevertheless, our hope and efforts in this direction must continue for the sake of the next generations and the survival of our species. The roots across time are common for India and Cyprus.

Prof. Panos Razis
Scientific Delegate of Cyprus at CERN

For more details, please contact me.