Christos Bokoros

March 6, 2018 / Leave a Comment

The Bare Essentials

Christos Th. Bokoros is a famous Greek painter. He is established as one of the top Contemporary Greek Artists.

He was born in 1956 in Agrinio. At first, he studied law at the Law School of the Democritus University of Thrace (1974-1979) and later he joined the Athens School of Fine Arts (1983-1989), where he studied painting under D. Mytaras. Whilst still a student, he presented his first solo exhibition in Athens (Gallery of Contemporary Art, 1987).

At the beginning of his career, he employed traditional painting techniques and drew his subjects from everyday life. The most striking feature of his early works was the extremely accurate and persuasive depiction of the visible world, a characteristic that governs his entire oeuvre.

With time, he started to produce thematic units of allegorical or symbolic content, through which he approached the archetypal dimension of the simple things, contemplating upon their connotations (Eggs, Parable of the Olive Tree History, Offering, Bed, et al).

In the meantime, he began to integrate miscellaneous materials in his work (mainly old pieces of wood) and to combine his paintings (oil on wood, canvas, linen or iron plates) with three-dimensional constructions and installations.
The key features of his oeuvre, i.e. the ritualistic repetition of certain motifs such as the flame, the correlation of the tangible with the intangible, the individual with the universal and the past with the present, sometimes interact poetically and sometimes semantically, evoking memories either personal or collective (Unread forest), and frequently turn the very act of painting into some kind of spiritual exercise.

He also worked as a stage designer in six theatrical productions of Greek plays (1995-2007).He has presented his work in solo and group exhibitions in Greece and abroad. He participated in international events, such as the 24th International Festival of Painting in 1992 (Cagnes-sur-Mer, France), where he was awarded the Grand Prix, and the 13th Mediterranean Biennial of Contemporary Art in 1994 (Nice, France), where he won the city prize ‘Saint Paul de Vence’.

His first retrospective exhibitions were organized in 2000 at the Old Tobacco Warehouse of Papastratos Bros. in Agrinio (made available by the Tassos Papastratos Foundation), and at the Petros and Marika Kydoniefs Foundation, on the island of Andros. His monograph was published in 2009. Source: dp.iset.gr